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THE  REFLECTIONS  OF 
A  LONELY  MAN 


THE   REFLECTIONS 
of  a   LONELY   MAN 


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THE  REFLECTIONS 
I 

OF    A 

LONELY    MAN 

By    A.    C.    M. 


SECOND    EDITION 

CHICAGO 
A.   C.   McCLURG    &  CO. 

1903 


COPYRIGHT 

BY  A.  C.  McCLURG  &  Co. 
1903 

Published  April  18,  1903 
Second  edition  published  July  i,  1903 


UNIVERSITY    PRESS   •     JOHN    WILSON 
AND      SON     •     CAMBRIDGE,     U.  S.  A. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I.     PRELIMINARY  MUSINGS 3 

II.     THE  VANTAGE  GROUND  OF  LONELINESS  iS 

III.  BOOKS,  DOCTORS,  IDEALISM,  LANGUAGE, 

AND  GOVERNMENT 55 

IV.  THE  SEARCH  FOR  SATISFACTION  .     .     .  124 
V.     THE  RELEASE  FROM  PAIN  .<,...  209 


960448 


THE   REFLECTIONS  of 

A  LONELY  MAN 


I 

PRELIMINARY    MUSINGS 

WHEN  a  man  has  just  been  well  fed, 
and  sits  in  the  easy  comfort  of  his 
smoking-jacket  and  slippers,  he  likes  to  toy 
a  while  with  thought  before  he  settles  down 
to  the  serious  business  of  thinking,  as  the 
wind  of  a  late  November  afternoon  eddies  in 
the  fence-corners  and  amorously  dallies  with 
the  leaves,  before  it  forms  itself  into  a  steady 
gale,  which,  let  us  hope,  will  not  blow  all  the 
leaves  away.  So  the  Lonely  Man  sits  gazing 
into  his  gas  fire,  while  his  fancy  playfully 
eddies  in  the  various  nooks  and  fence-corners 
of  creation ;  and,  from  gazing  into  the  fire, 
he  presently  falls  to  musing  about  it. 
3 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

yf  J*': 'A  tvood  fire  might  be  more  cheerful,  but 
gas  is  certainly  more  convenient  than  wood, 
and  this  is  an  age  of  convenient  things ;  but 
the  Lonely  Man  reflects,  as  he  gazes  into  the 
quivering  redness  of  the  burning  gas,  that 
the  increasing  convenience  of  things  has 
been  attained  at  some  sacrifice  of  cheerful 
ness  and  beauty.  The  very  existence  of  a 
fireplace  in  the  presence  of  the  steam  heat 
and  the  electric  lights  in  this  room  is  a  tacit 
admission  of  the  loss,  and  a  silent  protest 
against  it.  The  fireplace  is  a  tribute  to  the 
cheerful  picturesqueness  of  an  earlier  age 
"and  a  cruder  civilization.  Then  the  fire 
place  was  cheerful  only  because  it  was  neces 
sary  ;  now  it  is  necessary  only  because  it  is 
cheerful. 

On  the  whole,  the  burning  gas  is  not  a 
bad  substitute  for  the  blazing  logs  of  earlier 
times.  There  may  be  less  poetry  in  turning 
a  thumbscrew  than  there  is  in  poking  a 
burning  log,  but  there  is  also  less  danger  of 
soiling  one's  fingers  and  burning  holes  in 
4 


PRELIMINARY   MUSINGS 


the  carpet.  It  may  be  less  interesting  to 
apply  a  match  to  the  ragged  surface  of  asbes 
tos  than  it  is  to  construct  a  stratified  mass  of 
combustibles  and  then  guess  whether  the  tiny 
flame  in  the  shavings  at  the  bottom  will  ever 
reach  the  logs  at  the  top,  but  it  is  certainly 
less  frequently  disappointing. 

There  is  no  noisy  crackling  in  this  fire 
place  ;  there  are  no  showers  of  sparks ;  there 
is  no  gradual  dying  out  of  the  flame  to  re 
mind  one  of  the  decay  of  one's  own  am 
bitions  ;  and  there  are  no  ashes  left  to 
smoulder  and  grow  cold  in  the  grate  and 
remind  one  of  the  skeletons  of  one's  dead 
hopes.  This  fire  starts  quickly  and  burns 
with  a  constancy  which  surpasses  that  of 
human  friendship,  till,  at  the  will  of  the 
Lonely  Man,  it  makes  its  sudden  exit  into 
nothingness. 

It  is  no  mean    companion  while  it  lasts. 

It  lights  and  warms   and    cheers    the    room 

with    its    friendly    radiance,   while  the    sleet 

beats  an  endless  tattoo  on  the  windows  and 

5 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

the  breath  of  winter  whistles  past  the  corners 
of  the  house.  The  gentle,  fluttering  noise 
of  the  fire  seems  like  the  audible  blinking  of 
its  bright  eyes,  and  blends  harmoniously  with 
the  moan  and  roar  and  rattle  of  the  winter 
night. 

The  mere  thickness  of  a  window-pane 
separates  the  rudeness  of  the  storm  from  the 
cozy  comfort  of  the  room,  yet  this  only  makes 
the  room  seem  brighter  and  the  fire  seem 
warmer.  The  fluttering  voice  of  the  fire 
seems  like  a  quiet  assurance  of  the  potency 
of  gentleness  over  the  noisy  bluster  in  the 
outer  cold  and  darkness,  while  the  wailing  of 
the  storm  is  a  confession  of  its  own  impo 
tence. 

Secure  in  his  coziness,  the  Lonely  Man 
lights  his  briar  pipe  and  abandons  himself  to 
the  sensuous  enjoyment  of  physical  comfort 
and  the  keener  delight  of  undisturbed  medi 
tation.  The  pipe  is  a  gentle  promoter  of 
both.  The  rich  brown  hue  of  its  generous 
bowl  and  the  deep  indentations  of  its  mouth- 
6 


PRELIMINARY   MUSINGS 


piece  give  evidence  of  the  long  and  faithful 
service  which  it  has  performed,  and  awaken 
pleasing  expectations  of  the  ripe  flavor  which 
no  new  pipe  possesses.  A  pipe,  like  wine 
and  violins,  must  have  age,  and,  within  cer 
tain  limits,  it  improves  with  use. 

The  Lonely  Man's  teeth  settle  comfortably 
into  the  familiar  indentations;  his  ringers 
stray  in  loving  dalliance  over  the  warming 
bowl ;  his  lips  caress  the  smooth  amber  of 
the  stem ;  and  he  finds  no  small  degree  of 
satisfaction  in  these  accessories  of  the  act 
of  smoking,  which  appeal  only  to  the  sight 
and  touch.  He  likes  best  to  smoke  a  pipe 
that  has  a  simple,  pleasing  appearance,  in 
harmony  with  the  quieting  influence  of  the 
tobacco's  fragrance. 

The  pleasure  of  smoking  is  largely  a 
matter  of  imagination.  Of  all  the  physical 
pleasures,  it  seems  to  be  the  most  delicate, 
refined,  and  intellectual.  It  appeals  to  all 
the  senses.  The  eye  is  gratified  by  the 
wreaths  and  columns  and  spirals  of  smoke  as 
7 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

they  gracefully  float  in  ever-changing  forms 
upwards  toward  the  ceiling,  and  trace  their 
delicate  and  evanescent  frescoes  on  the  walls. 
This  is  a  beauty  of  figure,  color,  and  motion. 
In  the  outlines  there  is  nothing  that  could 
offend  the  most  aesthetic  taste,  and  there  is 
an  indefiniteness  that  allows  the  imagination 
free  play  to  see  in  the  fleeting  traceries  what 
images  it  will.  There  are  no  glaring  colors 
here  to  offend  the  artist's  eye ;  there  are  no 
clumsy  movements  to  disturb  the  dreamer's 
soul.  It  has  all  the  charm  of  the  impalpable, 
the  impermanent,  and  the  indefinite. 

The  smooth  feel  of  the  hard  round  bowl 
and  the  polished  stem  gratifies  the  fingers  and 
the  lips,  where  the  sense  of  touch  is  most 
acute.  There  is  an  elusive  element  in  this 
feel,  that  cannot  be  defined.  Such  is  the 
poverty  of  the  vocabulary  of  touch  that  we 
can  only  say,  u  The  pipe  feels  good  "  ;  but 
there  are  many  ways  of  pleasing  the  sense 
of  touch,  and  this  is  one  way  that  does  not 
bring  disquiet  in  its  wake. 
8 


PRELIMINARY   MUSINGS 


Taste  and  smell  find  in  the  soothing  fra 
grance  of  the  smoke  their  most  subtle  delight 
and  exquisite  satisfaction.  This  is  the  rich 
reward  to  which  the  faithful  eating  of  a  din 
ner  justly  leads.  It  would  be  a  dismal  world 
if  there  were  no  cooks  in  it,  for  it  has  been 
said  that  civilized  man  cannot  live  without 
cooks ;  but  after  the  coarse,  material  busi 
ness  of  eating,  the  pleasure  of  smoking  seems 
almost  refined  enough  to  be  called  spiritual. 

He  who  is  addicted  to  the  pleasures  of  the 
table  takes  the  solid  food  into  his  mouth, 
chews  it,  and  swallows  it ;  the  smoker  merely 
draws  the  imponderable  spirit  of  the  fragrant 
leaf  into  his  mouth,  where  it  implants  its 
subtle  kiss  and  works  its  gentle  sorcery,  and 
is  then  exhaled  in  graceful  clouds  in  whose 
interweaving  lines  and  curves  he  sees  the 
peaceful  rural  scenes  of  earlier  days  —  the 
winding  brook,  the  distant  field  of  waving 
grain,  the  glinting  rays  of  the  setting  sun, 
the  faces  of  loved  ones  whose  features  he  will 
never  see  again  except  in  some  spirit  world, 
9 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

be    it    the   world   of  these   dissolving  clouds 
or  some  other  spirit  world  we  know  not  of. 

Some  unfriendly  critic  of  the  habit  of  smok 
ing  has  said  that  a  pig  is  not  so  depraved  as 
a  man  who  smokes,  for  a  pig  will  not  smoke. 
It  is  true  that  pigs  do  not  smoke ;  at  least, 
not  many  of  them  do.  Unfortunately  there 
are  some  pigs  that  do  smoke,  but  this  is  not 
the  cause  of  their  swinishness ;  it  must  be 
something  else.  The  smoker's  pleasure  is 
procured  through  the  agency  of  fire,  the  type 
and  emblem  of  all  purity.  The  product  of 
the  fire  is  smoke ;  the  residue  is  ashes. 
These  things  and  their  enjoyment  are  as  far 
removed  from  thoughts  of  swine  as  filth  from 
purity. 

To  smoke,  and  see  the  children  of  one's 
fancy  in  the  fleecy  figures  of  the  smoke,  and 
let  one's  weary  mind  feed  on  the  past,  from 
which  the  gentle  offices  of  time  have  plucked 
the  stings,  while  memory  paints  the  joys  in 
brighter  colors  than  they  ever  had  before,  is 
man's  high  privilege. 

10 


PRELIMINARY   MUSINGS 


So  thinks  the  Lonely  Man,  as  the  storm 
howls  on ;  and  if  we  do  not  think  exactly  as 
he  does,  many  of  us  act  as  if  we  did,  and  we 
ought  therefore  to  alter  either  our  habits  or 
our  views. 

It  may  be  (reflects  the  Lonely  Man)  that 
smoking  has  its  penalties.  So  have  all  the 
other  pleasures  and  enjoyments  of  this  life. 
The  pleasures  of  this  life  are  like  some  lus 
cious  fruit  that  hangs  on  thorny  trees  beside 
our  pathway  through  the  world.  The  thorns 
inflict  the  penalties  we  pay  for  pleasure.  If 
we  pluck  the  fruit,  the  thorns  will  prick  us 
now  and  then ;  but  if,  like  cowards,  we  en 
deavor  to  avoid  these  thorns  by  shrinking  to 
the  pathway's  other  side,  we  not  only  miss 
the  fruit,  but  fall  into  those  spiky  brambles 
whose  barren  branches  bear  no  fruit. 

The  thorns  that  guard  the  pleasures  of  this 

life  are  not  the  only  thorns  along  our  path ; 

and    if  we  must   in  any  case  be  stung,    let 

us  rather  risk  the  penalties  of  moderate  en- 

ii 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

joyment  than  those  pains  whose  sharpness 
is  not  mitigated  by  reward  of  any  kind. 
Though  virtue  is  its  own  reward,  the  avoid 
ance  of  a  reasonable  pleasure  through  fear 
of  penalties  is  not  a  virtue.  The  fear  of 
penalty  is  the  skulking  worm  that  creeps  into 
the  apple's  core,  and  spoils  its  flavor  if  we 
pluck  and  eat  it,  or  scares  us  into  other  thorns 
as  sharp  as  those  that  guard  the  fruit  if  we  do 
not.  If  we  choose  wisely  and  then  pluck 
with  care,  we  may  avoid  the  points  of  many 
thorns  that  really  exist ;  and  if  we  banish 
fear,  the  dim  and  distant  outlines  of  many 
penalties  will  prove  to  be  illusions. 

The  only  certain  safety  in  this  world  is  in 
the  grave.  There  we  may  be  as  safe  as  none 
but  dead  men  can  be.  No  evil  agency 
can  harm  the  dead ;  the  living  are  in  con 
stant  danger.  But  it  is  a  foolish  soldier 
who  shoots  himself  to  escape  the  dangers 
of  the  battlefield;  and  he  has  as  dull  a  soul 
who  is  too  prudent  to  be  happy  now  and 
then. 

12 


PRELIMINARY    MUSINGS 


For  my  part,  I  prefer  to  take  a  middle 
course,  avoiding  certain  penalties  that  are  the 
price  of  pleasures  not  worth  so  sure  a  pain  ; 
and  when  I  cannot  choose  my  course,  but 
must  perforce  be  stung,  I  try  to  fix  my 
thoughts  upon  the  beauty  of  the  thorn  and 
learn  something  from  the  sting. 

For  example,  this  present  loneliness  of 
mine  has  serious  drawbacks,  but  I  am  not 
certain  that  it  is  not  a  blessing  in  disguise. 
If  it  is,  the  blessing  is  as  well  disguised  as 
are  the  advantages  of  poverty  ;  but  in  any 
case  it  is  my  present  lot,  and  if  it  has  advan 
tages,  I  shall  soon  learn  what  they  are. 

It  is  no  fault  of  mine  that,  during  my  long 
absence,  my  old  friends  have  been  scattered 
to  the  four  corners  of  the  upper  and  the 
nether  world.  It  is  through  no  fault  of  mine 
that  these  pleasant-looking  strangers  who 
now  surround  me  do  not  suspect  that  my 
companionship  might  be  amusing.  I  cannot 
tell  them ;  and  they  may  not  be  so  pleasant 
as  they  look.  The  few  of  them  that  I  do 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

know  do  not  seem  like  the  friends  of  former 
times. 

I  wonder  if  these  old  friends  themselves 
would  seem  the  same.  May  not  old  Father 
Time  have  played  strange  antics  with  their 
faces  and  their  natures  ?  When  friends  are 
parted  by  the  accidents  of  life,  and  separation 
lasts  till  they  become  accustomed  to  it,  it 
may  be  better  for  the  permanence  of  their 
affection  that  they  never  meet  again.  Their 
friendship  has  become  a  finished  product :  it 
crystallizes  like  the  language  of  a  dead  race, 
and  so  becomes  a  stable,  changeless  entity. 
If  this  gem  of  friendship  be  again  dissolved, 
it  may  never  crystallize  again,  and  if  it  does, 
it  certainly  will  take  a  different  form. 

The  friend  that  lives  among  my  dearest 
recollections  of  the  past  is  one  that  I  shall 
ever  love.  He  has  the  same  share  of  affec 
tion  that  he  ever  had.  I  count  the  fact  that 
we  have  known  and  loved  each  other  one  of 
the  imperishable  rewards  of  life. 
14 


PRELIMINARY   MUSINGS 


The  friend  I  meet  when  ten  long  years  have 
rolled  away  is  not  the  friend  I  used  to  know 
and  left.  He  tries  to  gather  up  the  scattered 
fibres  of  the  bond  that  once  united  us.  I  try 
to  do  the  same.  We  try  to  guide  the  long 
deflected  currents  of  our  lives  back  into  the 
channels  in  which  they  used  to  flow. 

The  effort  is  a  futile  one.  New  channels 
have  been  worn,  and  worn  so  deep  that  we 
shall  hardly  make  the  currents  leave  them; 
and  if  we  do,  they  find  their  old  beds  full  of 
the  debris  of  crumbling  banks  and  growing 
vegetation.  The  distinct  path  along  which 
they  once  took  their  easy  course  is  filled  with 
obstacles  and  in  some  places  quite  obliter 
ated  ;  and  so  the  struggling  current  either 
hurries  back  between  the  banks  that  give  it 
easy  passage,  or,  in  its  effort  to  seek  out  the 
old  obstructed  path,  it  wears  another  and  a 
different  channel  in  the  face  of  Nature.  A 
friendship  may  be  formed,  but  it  will  not  be 
the  old  one. 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

The  effort  to  restore  an  interrupted  friend 
ship  is  like  the  effort  that  a  writer  makes  to 
find  the  happy  thought  he  had  a  week  ago. 
He  calls  before  his  consciousness  the  gen 
eral  import  of  the  thought.  Here  is  one  of 
the  very  words  be  used  in  giving  utterance 
to  it ;  there  is  another  one ;  and,  struggling 
through  the  general  miscellany  of  more  re 
cent  rhffng**^  a  few  more  words  come  slowly 
creeping  to  his  mind.  He  takes  his  pen  and 
tries  to  write  the  thing  on  paper,  —  which 
has  a  better  memory  than  brains,  —  but  what 
he  writes  is  not  the  thought  he  had  before. 
The  substance  is  recovered,  but  the  snap  and 
sparkle  of  the  thing  are  gone,  and  he  cannot, 
by  any  effort  of  his  will,  compel  the  nebulous 
substance  of  the  thought,  which  still  is  his, 
to  take  die  definite  and  perfect  form  it  had 
before. 

The  past  is  past  for  ever,  and  therein  lies 
the  safety  of  its  treasures.     If  they  are  per 
fect  they  ever  shall  remain  so,  and  we  may 
love  them  as  we  will  ;  but  when  we  try  to 
16 


PRELIMINARY   MUSINGS 


duplicate  them  from  the  materials  of  the 
present,  we  shall  be  fortunate  if  we  do  not 
obtain  results  that  are  grotesque. 

To  feast  upon  the  treasures  of  this  past  is 
one  of  the  rewards  of  loneliness.  This  is 
a  rare  delight  that  flees  from  those  who  spend 
their  lives  in  hurrying  crowds. 


II 

THE  VANTAGE   GROUND    OF 
LONELINESS 

THERE  is  another  and  a  greater  gain  in 
loneliness,  reflects  the  Lonely  Man.  It 
is  the  gain  that  comes  from  thinking  one's 
own  thoughts  and  knowing  that  they  are 
one's  own  and  not  the  mere  participation 
of  an  automatic  mind  in  the  unreasoned 
thinking  of  a  mob.  How  many  thoughts  are 
uttered  that  are  not  the  mere  reverberations  of 
the  general  voice  ?  The  thought-wave  of  the 
crowd  strikes  on  the  puny  little  brain  of  one 
man  in  the  crowd,  and  he  crys  out,  "  Aye, 
aye  !  't  is  so  !  "  and  thinks  the  thought  his 
own.  He  passes  on  the  thought  with  neither 
18 


VANTAGE   GROUND   OF   LONELINESS 

more  nor  less  of  content  in  it  than  it  had 
before,  and  thus  the  ever-widening  circle  of 
this  mental  agitation  extends  till  it  embraces 
the  entire  crowd  and  blends  it  into  one  un 
reasoning  whole.  The  individual  minds  are 
blotted  out.  They  flow  together  like  the 
drops  that  go  to  form  the  ocean,  and  have  no 
longer  power  to  do  the  bidding  of  their  wills, 
but  yield  to  every  undulation  of  the  undiffer- 
entiated  whole. 

Unlike  a  wave  of  water,  sound,  or  light, 
which  loses  amplitude  with  every  increase  of 
the  distance  from  its  starting  point,  the  thought- 
wave  in  a  crowd  gathers  in  volume  with  its 
progress,  and  each  reflection  of  the  mental 
undulation  seems  to  strengthen  it.  A  whisper 
sets  a  mob  in  motion  ;  the  whispering  quickly 
grows  to  murmuring  ;  the  murmuring  grows 
to  yells  ;  and  when  the  yells  come  back  to 
him  who  uttered  the  first  whisper,  he  yells 
himself,  not  knowing  that  he  has  but  hyp 
notized  the  mob,  and  that  his  own  reflected 
hypnotism  has  hypnotized  himself. 
19 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

There  is  something  of  the  mob  in  every 
assemblage  :  it  has  not  many  minds,  but  one 
—  if  we  may  call  that  mind  whose  thinking  is 
as  reasonless  and  reflex  as  the  vagaries  of  a 
dream. 

What  is  the  nature  of  a  dream  ? 

If  the  sleeper's  head  is  high,  he  thinks  he 
is  being  hanged  ;  if  it  is  low,  he  is  falling 
down  a  well.  The  heavy  food  he  ate  last 
night  makes  an  impression  on  the  endings  of 
his  pneumogastric  nerve,  which  carries  this 
impression  to  the  medulla  oblongata,  — the  little 
piece  of  marrow  that  is  the  seat  of  all  the  vital 
centres  of  vegetative  life.  From  here  the 
spreading  fibres  of  the  crura  cerebri  conduct 
the  food's  impression  to  those  gray  cells  in 
the  brain  where  simple  consciousness  resides. 
It  goes  no  higher.  The  citadel  of  Reason, 
wherein  the  godlike  mistress  of  all  sane  think 
ing  sits,  has  closed  its  doors  and  drawn  the 
bridges  from  across  the  moat.  The  veiled 
enchantress,  Reason,  is  asleep;  and  while 
she  sleeps,  the  disconnected  and  ungoverned 
20 


VANTAGE   GROUND   OF   LONELINESS 

points  of  consciousness  within  the  brain, 
being  roused  to  action  by  the  food's  impres 
sion,  respond  by  being  conscious  in  the  only 
way  for  which  their  structure  fits  them. 

Their  different  structures  fit  them  to  be 
conscious  in  different  ways.  One  group  of 
cells  can  see,  but  cannot  hear  nor  smell  nor 
feel ;  and  if  the  impulse  started  by  a  sound 
or  smell  or  touch  can  reach  this  group,  the 
consciousness  of  sight  —  not  touch  nor  smell 
nor  sound  —  is  the  result.  One  group  can 
hear,  but  cannot  see  nor  feel  j  another  feels, 
and  others  taste  or  smell. 

If  the  slumber  is  not  deep,  these  different 
groups  may  be  united  into  a  larger  group,  in 
which  a  little  thinking,  like  the  thinking  of  a 
printing-press,  is  done.  It  simply  utters  to 
itself  the  thing  to  which  the  structure  of 
its  type  compels  it  to  give  utterance.  The 
movements  of  a  jumping-jack  could  not  be 
more  automatic.  Its  structure  makes  it  only 
fit  to  kick  or  turn  a  somersault,  and  when  its 
string  is  pulled,  no  matter  how,  the  jumping- 
21 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

jack  responds  in  the  only  way  in  which  it 
can  respond  —  it  kicks  or  turns  a  somersault. 
Thus  physical  disturbances  give  rise  to  gro 
tesque  fancies,  which  the  dreaming  mind 
believes  and  the  dreamer  sometimes  acts 
upon. 

If  the  sleeping  goddess,  Reason,  were 
awake,  she  would  at  once  perceive  the  ground 
lessness  of  all  these  various  perceptions  and 
conclusions.  She  would  at  once  distinguish 
that  of  which  she  simply  recollects  or  re- 
combines  a  past  impression  from  that  by 
which  she  is  surrounded.  Her  sovereign 
sway  would  relegate  these  flimsy  fragments 
of  the  shadow  world  back  to  their  proper 
sphere.  She  alone  would  be  the  guide  of 
choice  and  action  :  her  regal  voice  would  fix 
the  limits  and  conditions  of  belief.  No  con 
scious  nor  half-conscious  act  would  be  per 
mitted  whose  motive  did  not  first  appeal  to 
her  and  get  her  sanction.  No  credence 
would  be  given  to  groundless  fancies  that 
have  no  passport  to  the  sacred  chamber  of 
22 


VANTAGE   GROUND    OF   LONELINESS 

belief,  and  the  agitation  of  a  group  of  partly 
disconnected  brain  cells  would  not  be  counted 
such  a  passport. 

But  now,  while  Reason  sleeps,  the  most 
absurd  and  idiotic  fancies  are  believed.  Both 
judgment  and  volition  have  become  the  sport 
and  plaything  of  every  chance  impression  : 
an  elephant  has  feathers  ;  a  crocodile  has 
wings ;  a  man  falls  in  a  pit  that  is  ten  feet 
deep,  and  never  strikes  the  bottom.  He 
dreams  he  slays  his  dearest  child,  and  dreams 
that  he  does  right ;  or  he  is  dead  and  knows 
he  is,  and  still  attends  to  his  affairs  on  earth. 
Or,  if  the  field  of  action  is  invaded,  the 
dreamer  leaves  his  bed  and  does  things  that 
he  neither  would  nor  could  do  if  awake  :  he 
climbs  down  fire  escapes  or  lightning  rods, 
and  thinks  he  is  dancing  on  a  level  floor. 

Such  is  the  nature  of  a  dream.  Such  is 
the  nature  of  all  thought  and  action  when 
Reason  does  not  sit  upon  her  throne  and 
wield  her  royal  sceptre,  and  seldom  does  she 

23 


REFLECTIONS    OF   A    LONELY    MAN 

sit  secure  upon  her  throne  in  the  environ 
ment  of  a  crowd.  The  presence  of  the 
crowd  distracts  and  interrupts  the  inner  cur 
rents  of  the  soul  by  which  Queen  Reason 
holds  communication  with  the  lower  mind. 
The  currents  seem  to  leave  their  protoplasmic 
wires  within  the  brain,  and,  through  the 
medium  of  sympathy,  to  leap  through  space 
to  other  brains  when  other  brains  come  near. 

The  all-pervading  medium  of  the  mental 
universe  is  sympathy  ;  and  as  the  undula 
tions  of  material  ether  transmit  such  forms 
of  energy  as  heat  and  light  and  magnetism  to 
every  particle  and  planet  in  the  world  of 
space,  so  sympathy  transmits  these  subtler 
forces  of  the  soul  from  one  soul  to  another, 
with  an  increase  of  intensity  as  their  prox 
imity  increases.  So  fear  or  anger,  courage, 
merriment,  or  hope,  will  leap  through  sym 
pathy  across  an  intervening  space  and  cause 
a  like  emotion  in  another  mind. 

If  this  drawing  off  of  currents  makes  a 
break  in  the  connection  between  the  higher 
24 


VANTAGE   GROUND   OF   LONELINESS 

and  the  lower  elements  of  mind,  Queen 
Reason  sleeps  again,  for  she  cannot  keep 
awake  without  the  stimulus  of  action ;  and, 
without  the  personality  which  Reason  gives, 
the  mental  forces,  melting  into  those  of  all 
the  other  minds  about  them,  may  be  moulded 
by  suggestion  as  a  potter  moulds  a  mass  of 
clay.  He  of  the  crowd  asks  not,  u  What 
does  Reason  say  ?  "  but,  "  What  says  the 
crowd?" 

There  may  be  strong  men  in  the  crowd 
who  are  not  of  it.  There  may  be  others  not 
so  strong,  who,  while  they  feel  the  substance 
of  their  minds  and  wills  dissolving  in  the 
mental  tides  that  ebb  and  flow  about  them, 
still  do  a  little  thinking  for  themselves.  The 
rest  have  undergone  complete  solution  in  the 
waters  of  those  tides,  and  have  no  more  voli 
tion  of  their  own  than  a  patent  music-box 
that  plays  whatever  piece  one  puts  between 
its  rollers.  They  undulate  to  every  wind  of 
doctrine  that  blows  upon  them  and  move  in 
25 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

dull  obedience  before  the  one  that  blows  upon 
them  hardest.  What  they  believe  is  what 
the  crowd  believes;  what  they  approve  is 
what  the  crowd  approves.  And  if  to-morrow 
the  general  conscience  and  belief  shall  change, 
theirs  will  change  with  them,  and  not  because 
a  ground  for  change  is  found,  but  for  the 
sole  reason  that  one  drop  of  water  in  the 
ocean  can  hold  no  more  nor  less  of  salt  than 
its  next  neighbors. 

The  crowd  they  follow  may  be  either  great 
or  small ;  its  sway  may  reach  back  into  the 
remotest  past,  or  be  a  thing  of  yesterday  ; 
it  may  be  like  a  little  lake  whose  slender 
streams  keep  it  but  faintly  in  communica 
tion  with  the  sea,  or  like  a  mighty  ocean, 
embodying  in  its  substance  the  most  of 
all  the  liquid  minds  that  are  or  have  been 
or  shall  be. 

In  any  case  such  persons'  minds  are  liquid, 
and  their  bodies  do  the  bidding  of  their  form 
less  minds.  They  ever  bend  their  suppliant 
knees  before  their  shrine  of  fashion,  be  it  the 
26 


VANTAGE   GROUND   OF   LONELINESS 

fashion  of  apparel  or  that  of  belief.  They 
wear  the  clothes  she  dictates,  without  regard 
to  comfort,  beauty,  health,  or  common  sense. 
They  blindly  follow  where  she  leads  in 
politics  and  religion.  They  wear  the  face  of 
Europe  out  in  waging  vain  crusades  against 
the  Turks,  and  blot  the  history  of  the  world 
by  burning  heretics  and  witches. 

They  learn  at  school  that  three  times  one 
are  three,  and  straightway  go  to  church  and 
learn  that  three  times  one  are  one.  They 
are  as  confident  that  they  are  right  in  one 
place  as  in  the  other.  In  neither  case  do 
they  believe  because  they  hear  the  voice  of 
Reason  telling  them  that  that  which  they  be 
lieve  is  true.  In  their  minds  Reason  sleeps ; 
her  sacred  voice  is  dumb ;  and  what  is  left 
of  mental  life  in  them  is  no  more  worthy  to 
be  called  a  mind  than  is  the  mechanism  of 
a  phonograph,  which  speaks  back  anything 
that  one  speaks  into  it,  provided  it  is  spoken 
loud  enough. 


27 


:-.;     :  :.    :;::-;  r  A   :    N:::.V  VAN 

If  they  are  scientific,  their  science  will 
most  certainly  conform  to  the  formulae  pre 
scribed  by  that  particular  scientific  crowd  to 
which  they  happen  to  belong.  If  some  rash 
member  of  the  crowd  brings  forward  some 
new  truth  which  contradicts  some  old  ac 
cepted  theory,  they  ridicule  his  reasoning  and 
treat  him  with  contempt  and  scorn,  —  unless 
he  is  a  leader  of  the  crowd  whom  it  is  the 
finrnrrn  to  believe.  In  that  case,  the  very 
walls  are  damaged  by  their  tumultuous  ap 
plause.  They  wear  out  their  eyes  and  mi 
croscopes  in  Jimnting  further  proof  of  what 
the  great  man  says;  and,  no  matter  what 
they  find,  not  until  the  current  of  belief 
within  their  crowd  begins  to  ebb  will  the 
firmness  of  their  own  conviction  weaken. 

In  the  field  of  politics  their  side  is  always 
wholly  right,  and  the  other  wholly  wrong, 
whether  the  innr  be  a  tariff,  stamp  act,  pro 
hibition,  or  a  war  with  Spain.  No  matter 
how  their  leaders  blunder,  or  the  country 
28 


VANTAGE   GROUND   OF   LONELINESS 

flourishes  or  suffers,  no  matter  how  their 
promises  are  kept  or  broken,  their  side  is 
always  right  and  the  other  side  is  wrong. 

If  some  great  or  small  upheaval  in  the 
swamp  of  politics  should  make  them  occupy 
the  ground  their  foes  have  lately  held,  and 
send  the  other  party  to  the  ooze  and  slime 
which  they  themselves  have  just  forsaken,  the 
doctrines  which  they  fought  before  they  now 
defend,  and  they  execrate  their  own  aban 
doned  policies.  For  this  change  of  heart 
their  ever-ready  tongues  will  find  pretexts,  and 
their  heads  will  think  them  reasons.  That 
the  cause  of  their  conversion  is  the  presence  in 
this  new  part  of  the  swamp  of  their  own  par 
ticular  crowd  or  dominating  leader,  they  never 
once  suspect.  They  may  deny  that  they 
have  undergone  a  change,  so  easily  do  they 
assume  new  forms.  The  shimmering  sur 
face  of  their  minds  will  now  reflect  as  true 
an  image  of  the  cat-tails  waving  over  them 
as  were  the  images  of  those  dragon-flies  that 
were  embodied  in  their  old  belief. 
29 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

The  literature  they  read  must  bear  the 
impress  of  that  literary  fashion  which  has 
dominion  in  their  crowd.  The  books  and 
magazines  they  read  are  praised  and  gloated 
over,  not  because  their  contents  merit  it,  but 
because  the  author's  or  the  publisher's  name 
upon  the  title-page  is  a  literary  fetich  in  their 
crowd  and  has  the  magic  power  of  making 
wheat  and  chaff  of  equal  worth.  They 
blindly  think  their  favorite  authors  cannot 
make  mistakes  with  reference  to  either  liter 
ary  art  or  facts,  —  oblivious  of  the  axiom 
that  no  living  man  is  perfect,  and  that 
nothing  ever  was  or  can  be  proved  by  being 
printed  in  a  book. 

What  fallacy  that  ever  yet  has  been  con 
ceived  within  the  human  mind  and  come  to 
term  has  not  been  born  on  paper  ?  If  be 
ing  printed  could  make  an  assertion  true,  I 
would  print  the  consummation  of  my  dearest 
hopes  and  thus  transmute  the  shadowy  ma 
terial  of  hope  into  the  solid  substance  of 
reality.  I  would  write  the  opposite  of  many 
30 


VANTAGE   GROUND    OF   LONELINESS 

things  which  now  are  true,  and  make  them 
untrue;  for  the  slavish  ink  would  shape 
itself  into  a  falsehood  with  no  more  trouble 
than  it  takes  to  tell  the  truth. 

A  truth  must  find  its  proof  in  reason  or 
experience  and  not  in  ink,  which  can  do 
nothing  but  present  it  to  these  tests.  If 
these  tests  prove  it  true,  it  is  true;  if  they 
do  not,  there  is  not  ink  enough  in  all 
the  sea  of  books  which  groaning  printing- 
presses  vomit  forth  to  prove  one  word  of 
any  truth. 

The  slaves  who  follow  crowds  mistake  the 
medium  of  truth  for  truth  itself.  To  them 
the  printed  statement  of  a  fact  is  the  fact, 
especially  if  they  find  it  in  some  book  which 
has  the  approbation  of  their  crowd.  Then, 
not  only  do  they  pin  their  faith  and  fix  the 
seal  of  their  approval  to  the  book,  but  their 
interpretation  of  its  contents  is  the  one  that 
has  the  sanction  of  the  crowd.  If  in  some 
lofty  moral  lesson  wrought  into  the  texture 
of  a  fable  the  crowd  sees  nothing  but  a 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

literal  narrative  of  facts,  they  will  see  nothing 
in  the  story  but  authentic  history,  and  the 
winds  of  prejudice  which  they  let  loose  lash 
up  the  watery  substance  of  their  minds  into 
furious  waves  whose  thunders  drown  the 
voice  of  him  who  sees  the  truth.  If,  on 
the  other  hand,  a  love-song  seething  with  the 
passions  of  hot-blooded  youth  is  held  to  be 
a  prophecy,  they  see  in  each  particular  sen 
tence  a  prophetic  meaning  which  the  author 
never  put  there,  and  they  completely  miss 
the  beauty  of  the  song.  If  in  the  crude 
attempts  of  primitive,  half-savage  man  to  find 
an  explanation  of  the  universe,  the  crowd 
finds  reason  to  believe  that  Nature's  laws  are 
temporal  and  mutable,  they  blindly  do  the 
same  and  strive  to  close  not  only  their  own 
eyes,  but  those  of  all  mankind.  Thus,  they 
miss  the  lesson  which  the  ancient  writers 
teach,  that  man's  solution  of  Nature's  bound 
less  mystery  must  be  gradual,  and  that  every 
honest  effort  in  this  line  contains  some  grains 
of  truth  which  may  give  it  lasting  fame. 
32 


VANTAGE   GROUND    OF   LONELINESS 

If  their  crowd  is  one  that  makes  a  specialty 
of  scoffing  at  the  writings  which  some  other 
crowd  holds  dear,  they  will  sneer  and  scoff  be 
cause  their  crowd  does,  and  not  because  they 
ever  had  opinions  of  their  own.  An  applauded 
shaft  of  sarcasm  which  they  hear  their  leaders 
utter  has  the  force  of  an  obsession  in  their 
minds,  —  not  because  the  situation  warrants 
it  (and  sometimes  it  does),  but  because  they 
know  it  takes  the  fancy  of  their  crowd. 

The  book  that  lives  because  its  gleaming 
rays  of  truth  send  swift  conviction  into  minds 
that  have  not  yet  dissolved  within  the  crowd 
(and,  when  Reason  momentarily  awakes,  into 
those  minds  that  have),  lives  by  the  same 
concurrence  of  opinion  that  gives  unworthy 
fame  to  books  that  have  but  hypnotized  the 
crowd.  Who  knows,  then,  whether  any 
book  that  rides  high  on  the  wave  of  popu 
larity  is  held  aloft  by  virtue  of  its  own  eter 
nal  worth  or  by  the  force  of  fashion  ?  One 
may  decide  by  reading  it  whether  it  deserves 
the  place  it  has  ;  but,  even  though  the  .book 
3  33 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

be  worthy  of  its  fame,  can  one  know  that  it 
is  this  that  keeps  its  name  and  its  author's 
name  alive  ?  How  long  must  fame  outlive 
its  dead  possessor  to  prove  that  it  depends 
upon  a  true  perception  of  the  dead  man's 
work  ? 

Those  who  compose  the  automatic  and 
composite  crowd-mind  are  as  completely 
under  the  dominion  of  suggestion  in  their 
acts  and  feelings  as  they  are  in  their  beliefs. 
Their  aims  in  life  and  their  methods  of 
achieving  them  are  the  aims  and  methods  of 
the  crowd.  In  the  shaping  of  these  ends 
and  means  Reason  has  no  voice.  If  their 
crowd  bows  at  the  shrine  of  Mammon,  so  do 
they;  if  it  worships  Mars,  they  bend  the 
knee  to  him ;  and  they  know  as  little  why 
they  worship  one  god  as  the  other. 

Thrift  that  impels  men  to  provide  for 
future  needs  is  reasonable,  and  the  just  pro 
tection  of  one's  honor,  liberty,  or  life  may 
necessitate  recourse  to  arms ;  but  it  is  not 
34 


VANTAGE   GROUND   OF   LONELINESS 

thrift  that  gives  to  gold  its  devilish  charm, 
nor  justice  that  makes  war  the  hellish  game 
it  is.  It  is  the  inertia  of  a  somnambulistic 
crowd. 

Swayed  by  the  suggestion  that  the  mere 
possession  of  unnecessary  wealth  confers 
more  honor  than  any  virtue  could  confer,  the 
dancing  puppets  of  the  crowd  scramble  after 
money  which  they  do  not  need  and  never 
can  need,  —  often  at  the  cost  of  all  their 
honor,  all  their  virtues,  all  their  finer  feelings, 
and  all  their  decent  human  traits, — just  to 
get  the  plaudits  and  the  envy  of  other  dancing 
puppets  like  themselves. 

When  the  dreamer  wakes,  he  cannot  tell 
why  he  left  his  bed  and  found  the  most  un 
speakably  intense  delight  in  heaping  up  a 
pile  of  trash.  Nor  do  the  dreaming  puppets 
of  the  crowd  know  that  the  keen  delight 
they  find  in  amassing  needless  wealth  is  not 
based  on  reason,  but  springs  from  the  tyranny 
of  a  fierce  suggestion  dominating  a  somnam 
bulistic  crowd. 

35 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

The  joy  they  find  in  needless  wealth  would 
quickly  vanish  if  their  crowd  should  disinte 
grate  and  its  individual  members  so  awake. 
What  pleasure  would  their  vast  possessions 
give  them  if  they  should  be  banished  from 
their  crowd,  and  their  liquid  minds  should 
melt  in  the  waters  of  some  other  crowd  in 
which  no  drop  of  mental  liquid  but  their  own 
would  find  pleasure  in  unnecessary  wealth  ? 

But  now,  while  the  teeming  millions  of 
their  fellow  drops  find  their  most  ecstatic 
joy  in  the  ownership  of  wealth,  so  do  they. 
Though  their  fellows  have  no  gold  and  curse 
the  man  who  has,  yet  they  feel  the  deadly 
charm  of  its  baleful  glitter,  and  —  although  they 
do  not  know  it  —  what  they  feel  is  instantly 
imparted  to  the  waters  of  the  crowd  about 
them,  and  helps  to  swell  the  heaving  billows 
of  its  greed.  One  liquid  mind  thus  acts  and 
reacts  on  the  liquid  minds  about  it  in  awak 
ening  and  maintaining  greed  for  gold,  as  it 
does  in  transmitting  and  reflecting  waves  of 
murderous  fury  in  a  mob. 

36 


VANTAGE    GROUND    OF    LONELINESS 

It  cannot  be  denied  that  it  requires  ability 
to  create  a  princely  fortune,  and  there  is 
some  reason  in  the  admiration  of  ability  of 
any  kind  ;  but  it  does  not  follow  that  it  is 
as  reasonable  to  admire  that  which  ability 
achieves.  It  requires  some  skill  and  courage 
to  cut  a  good  man's  throat ;  and  a  successful 
counterfeiter  can  lay  claim  to  some  ability. 
But  the  crowd  that  follows  Mammon  pays 
homage  not  so  much  to  skill  and  courage  as 
to  gold.  If  a  man  has  that  in  plenty,  no  one 
cares  in  Mammon's  crowd  how  much  or 
little  sense  he  has. 

Really  great  men  in  that  crowd  are  seldom 
great  enough  to  feel  that  there  is  no  special 
honor  in  a  rich  man's  smile.  Men  of  smaller 
calibre,  who  still  have  sense,  count  it  gain  to 
violate  what  sense  they  have  to  get  the  rich 
man's  notice.  The  rest  are  so  completely 
hypnotized  by  wealth  that  they  see  no  other 
good  or  great  thing  in  this  world  or  any  future 
world.  Even  though  they  hate  the  owner, 
they  betray  by  their  very  hatred  how  they 
37 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

envy  him  and  would  like  to  own  his  wealth. 
If  they  can,  they  imitate  him,  and  if  they 
can't,  they  often  try  to  do  so.  If  he  has 
some  crazy  fad,  they  endeavor  to  affect  it 
also.  If  he  is  illiterate,  they  do  not  care  for 
learning.  If  he  is  immoral,  their  own  morals 
may  be  lax.  Doing  what  he  does,  they  feel 
in  some  small  measure  the  honor  and  the 
greatness  which  they  think  belong  to  wealth. 
They  read  in  glaring  headlines  all  the  petty 
details  of  the  rich  man's  daily  life,  and  thus 
furnish  all  the  reason  editors  have  for  print 
ing  such  unprofitable  trash.  They  join  the 
rich  man's  club,  and  they  attend  the  church 
of  which  he  is  a  member.  They  build  their 
houses  on  the  rich  man's  street  and  as  near 
his  house  as  they  can. 

Rich  men  are  not  all  fools,  nor  are  all  poor 
men  slaves  to  Mammon  ;  but  those  who  are, 
and  whose  prayers  to  Mammon  have  not  yet 
been  answered,  would  give  ten  years  of  life 
to  have  any  fool  who  is  rich  thrust  his  feet 
beneath  their  tables  and  eat  their  food. 
38 


VANTAGE   GROUND   OF   LONELINESS 

Their  doors  will  quickly  swing  upon  their 
hinges  to  the  magic  touch  of  gold,  and  no 
questions  will  be  asked  as  to  how  the  gold 
was  won.  Their  daughters'  hearts,  though 
cold  as  marble  to  the  pleading  voice  of  love, 
will  melt  like  snow  in  summer  in  a  crucible 
of  gold. 

Thus,  however  much  they  hate  the  man, 
by  every  word  and  action  they  glorify  his 
wealth.  By  their  envy  and  their  fawning 
and  their  aping  of  rich  men,  and  their  base 
idolatry  of  wealth,  the  puppets  of  the  crowd 
who  have  no  wealth  exhibit  as  complete  a 
subjugation  to  automatic  greed  as  that  which 
dominates  the  greediest  millionaire.  Their 
fluid  minds  impart  emotions  as  readily  as  they 
absorb  them,  and  thus  intensify  the  force  of 
that  false  suggestion  which  gives  to  needless 
wealth  the  only  charm  it  has.  So  the  insane 
greed  for  gold  dissolves  and  grows  within  the 
general  crowd,  while  the  gold  itself  collects 
within  the  coffers  of  a  few. 


39 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

If  the  crowd  is  one  of  fighters,  those  who 
compose  it  are  dominated  by  the  love  of 
war.  They  see  no  glory  and  no  honor  save 
that  achieved  in  battle,  and  they  see  this  just 
because  it  is  suggested  to  them.  Nature  may 
have  given  them  human  hearts,  but  the  plau 
dits  of  their  crowd  will  make  them  glad  to 
welter  in  a  human  shambles.  Their  greatest 
heroes  are  the  men  whose  hands  have  shed 
the  greatest  quantity  of  human  blood.  Their 
interests  are  the  interests  of  war.  The  cause 
for  which  they  fight  may  be  either  just  or 
unjust,  but  the  delight  they  find  in  slaughter 
is  not  the  pleasure  that  arises  from  satisfying 
justice;  it  rests  upon  the  lust  for  carnage 
awakened  by  some  breath  of  hell  blowing  on 
an  automatic  crowd. 

The  walking  dreamer  cannot  tell,  when  he 
awakes,  why  it  gave  him  pleasure  when 
asleep  to  cut  his  brother's  throat ;  nor  does 
the  war  crowd  know  that  the  hideous  joy  it 
finds  in  wholesale  murder  is  the  suggested 
pleasure  of  a  crowd  that  has  been  hypno- 
40 


VANTAGE   GROUND   OF   LONELINESS 

tized.  Poor  human  nature,  however  bad  it 
is,  would  never  do  the  ghastly  things  that 
have  been  done  on  myriad  battlefields,  if 
their  doing  were  dependent  on  the  approval 
of  Reason. 

But  there  is  no  other  form  of  hypnotism 
that  sweeps  so  surely  and  so  swiftly  through 
the  most  enormous  crowds  as  that  which  is 
induced  by  the  bugle  blast  of  war.  There  is 
no  other  crowd  that  is  so  completely  auto 
matic  as  the  crowd  whose  serried  ranks  com 
prise  the  means  and  food  of  war.  The 
commands  of  officers  are  unconsciously 
obeyed.  The  men  and  the  very  horses  of 
the  crowd  are  mere  levers  and  escapements, 
wheels  and  springs  of  some  machine.  In  the 
tumult  of  the  fight,  the  movements  of  the 
vast  machine  may  seem  less  regular  and  uni 
form,  but  they  are  no  less  automatic  than  the 
movements  of  a  marching  army.  And,  as 
some  monster  engine  whose  wheels  have  left 
the  tracks  will  plunge  in  mindless  madness 
to  its  own  complete  destruction,  crushing  into 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

flying  splinters  every  obstacle  in  its  way,  so 
when  some  accident  of  war  starts  a  panic  in 
the  war  machine,  there  is  no  means  of  stay 
ing  it  till  its  fury  has  been  spent. 

Hope  and  fear  and  hate  and  thirst  for  hu 
man  blood  are  as  dependent  on  suggestion  in 
this  huge  machine  as  are  the  movements  of  a 
marching  or  a  righting  army  or  the  pandemo 
nium  of  a  disorderly  retreat. 

But  the  actual  war  machine  is  not  the 
whole  war  crowd,  and  all  the  fluid  minds 
within  the  crowd  are  dominated  by  the  same 
suggestion  that  controls  the  soldier  in  the 
field.  Ranting  politicians  who  start  the  first 
war  cry,  demagogues  whose  duties  to  their 
families  keep  them  at  their  own  firesides, 
silly  girls  whose  heads  are  turned  by  the 
splendor  of  their  lovers'  uniforms,  kings  and 
princes  whose  dominions  are  not  wide  enough, 
and  all  the  hosts  of  others  who  see  glory  in 
the  murder  of  a  fellow-man  for  murder's 
sake,  are  members  of  the  dreaming  crowd, 
whose  fluid  minds  have  melted  in  its  waves. 
42 


VANTAGE    GROUND    OF   LONELINESS 

They  get  their  feelings  from  the  fluid  minds 
about  them  and  impart  their  dreaming  frenzy 
to  their  neighbors.  Thus  the  whole  crowd 
is  a  huge  automaton,  with  no  will  or  reason 
of  its  own. 

In  their  amusements,  the  followers  of 
crowds  get  their  inspiration  not  from  Reason, 
but  from  the  crowd.  If  the  latter  finds  its 
chief  delight  in  straddling  a  two-wheeled 
machine,  and  riding  like  the  wind  to  no 
place,  for  no  reason,  —  so  do  they.  The 
usefulness  of  the  machine  and  the  pleasure 
which  its  reasonable  use  affords  are  not  the 
reasons  for  their  riding  it.  They  do  it  — 
though  they  do  not  know  it  —  because  it  is 
the  fashion  of  the  crowd.  Their  minds,  at 
this  particular  point,  have  melted  in  the 
waters  of  the  crowd,  which  diffuse  some 
specially  soluble  ingredients  with  greater 
swiftness  than  some  others.  The  frenzy 
quickly  spreads,  like  an  epidemic  of  la  grippe, 
till  the  very  roads  and  sidewalks  are  ob- 
43 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

structed  with  flying  wheels.  Little  boys  and 
girls,  young  men  arid  women,  aged  men  with 
flying  beards  and  spindling  shanks,  ponderous 
dames  with  quivering  outlines,  blushing  spin 
sters  and  other  females  grown  too  bold  to 
blush,  —  crouch  like  monkeys  in  the  saddle, 
while  their  reeking  bodies  pump  and  pedal, 
jolt  and  jostle,  over  stony  roads  to  proclaim 
their  own  subjection  to  the  craze. 

If  the  crowd  is  one  that  travels,  your 
crowd-man  travels  with  the  best  of  them, 
not  for  the  benefit  that  sane  minds  get  from 
travel,  but  because  of  his  subjection  to  the 
fashion  of  the  crowd.  He  strokes  his  pointed 
beard  in  Paris  and  ogles  shop-girls  in  Berlin, 
and  swells  with  silly  pride  to  think  how  like 
he  is  to  the  travelled  members  of  his  crowd 
whose  ape  and  mirror  he  aspires  to  be.  He 
travels  endless  weary  miles  in  wretched  rail 
road  coaches  to  see  some  landscape  that  may 
not  equal  those  he  never  saw  at  home.  He 
grows  eloquent  over  any  pond  in  Europe,  as 
44 


VANTAGE   GROUND   OF   LONELINESS 

if  there  were  no  lakes  at  home.  He  lets  a 
red-nosed  guide  fill  his  memory  with  fables 
about  any  crumbling  pile  of  stones  and  mortar 
that  some  other  fool  has  paid  to  see.  He 
does  it  all  because  it  is  the  fashion  of  his 
crowd,  and  does  not  stop  to  notice  that  he 
has  been  hypnotized.  If  Reason  were  awake, 
he  certainly  would  not  do  all  the  things  he 
does,  or,  at  least,  would  do  them  differently. 

If  his  crowd  is  superstitious,  so  is  he.  He 
will  lie  awake  at  night  and  tremble  while  he 
listens  for  the  footsteps  of  a  ghost  that  some 
other  members  of  his  crowd  have  heard.  If 
he  hears  them,  or  thinks  he  does  (which  is 
the  same),  he  will  pay  a  priest  to  exorcise  the 
house.  He  will  let  the  broken  fragments  of 
a  mirror  outweigh  the  reassuring  voice  of 
science,  and  make  up  his  mind  to  die;  some 
times  he  will  succeed,  for  a  false  conviction 
may  be  as  depressing  to  the  vital  forces  as  a 
fear  which  Reason  warrants. 


45 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

If  some  crazy  agitation  is  going  forward 
in  the  neighborhood,  and  some  new  prophet 
or  Messiah  is  being  proclaimed,  the  crowd- 
man  is  the  one  who  is  most  apt  to  go  to 
scoff  and  then  remain  to  pray.  His  fluid 
mind  is  so  devoid  of  personality  that  it  in 
stantly  assumes  the  form  and  nature  of  the 
minds  within  the  crowd  it  happens  to  be  in 
at  a  particular  time. 

Thus  do  all  weak  minds  —  and  in  a  less 
degree  all  stronger  ones  —  reveal  their  solu 
bility  in  all  the  oceans,  lakes,  and  pools  in 
which  the  minds  of  men  collect. 

To  think  one's  own  thoughts  and  to  know 
they  are  one's  own,  and  not  the  thoughts 
which  melted  minds  absorb  in  mobs  ;  to  feel 
the  sane  emotions  of  the  human  heart,  and 
know  they  are  the  feelings  normal  to  one's 
self;  to  let  Reason  guide  one's  thoughts  and 
feelings  and  desires,  as  far  as  Reason  can 
guide  human  minds — these  are  the  gains  of 
loneliness.  Strong  minds  within  the  crowd 
46 


VANTAGE    GROUND    OF    LONELINESS 

may  do  all  this,  but  such  strong  minds  will 
not  be  of  the  crowd,  and  will  be  as  lonely 
as  the  mind  of  him  whose  sole  companion 
is  his  pipe. 

But  is  there  any  mortal  mind  whose  lone 
liness  is  complete  ?  No ;  and  it  is  well  that 
this  is  true  —  well  for  the  crowd  and  for  the 
lonely  mind.  The  world  owes  much  to  the 
automatic  crowd-mind,  for  though  it  seems 
to  work  as  blindly  as  some  huge  machine,  its 
products,  like  the  products  of  machines,  are 
often  either  beautiful  or  useful.  It  does  not 
act  within  the  realm  or  under  the  control  of 
anything  like  ordinary  human  Reason.  It 
acts  only  in  obedience  to  suggestion,  but 
only  when  its  working  is  opposed  to  Reason 
does  it  become  a  thing  of  terror  or  of 
ridicule. 

There  is  a  boundless  field  of  thought  and 
action  irr  which  the  crowd-mind  is  our  only 
guide.  In  this  field  Reason  tells  us  only 
what  is  possible  and  what  impossible;  she 
cannot  tell  us  what  is  real  or  what  is  best ; 
47 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

and  here,  if  Reason  does  not  tell  us  that  the 
product  of  the  crowd-mind  is  absurd,  we  may 
accept  it.  So  marvellous  an  instrument  as 
language  is  a  thing  which  the  automatic 
crowd-mind  has  produced  without  the  aid  of 
Reason  ;  and  yet  this  instrument  is  one  which 
Reason  uses  and  must  use.  Each  word  in 
any  language  is  a  product  of  suggestion  act 
ing  on  the  automatic  crowd-mind.  The 
members  of  the  crowd  yield  to  the  current 
custom  of  giving  utterance  to  thought  as  they 
accept  the  current  feelings  and  beliefs  and 
false  ideals  of  the  crowd.  In  originating  and 
perpetuating  language  Reason  has  no  voice, 
and  can  have  none.  There  is  no  reason 
that  we  can  see  why  any  language  that  ex 
ists  is  better  than  a  thousand  other  possible 
languages  would  have  been  if  they  had  been 
adopted  soon  enough ;  and  yet,  these  other 
languages  do  not,  and  never  will,  exist.  If 
we  utter  thoughts  or  even  think  them,  we 
must  use  the  instrument  which  the  crowd- 
mind  has  given  us. 

48 


VANTAGE   GROUND   OF   LONELINESS 

Not  only  in  its  great  utility  is  language 
wonderful,  but  in  its  revelation  of  the  very 
laws  of  knowledge.  In  the  structure  of  a 
sentence  in  any  language  the  same  eternal 
laws  of  logic  or  of  knowledge  stand  revealed. 
However  much  the  words  of  one  crowd  differ 
from  those  of  other  crowds,  in  their  outer 
forms  and  their  arrangement  in  the  sentence, 
they  group  themselves  into  the  self-same  parts 
of  speech,  which  represent,  in  all  the  differ 
ent  languages,  the  self-same  elements  of 
thought  and  knowledge.  To  the  analytic 
mind  a  sentence  is  not  merely  the  expression 
of  a  truth  :  it  is  that  which  shows  the  ele 
ments  of  which  the  truth  consists.  Although 
truth  is  eternal  while  fashions  change,  here 
is  a  field  of  truth  which  has  been  opened  up 
to  Reason  by  the  caprice  of  Fashion.  The 
unreasoned  freaks  and  whims  of  Fashion,  in 
the  form  of  signs  and  words,  have  caught 
upon  the  unseen  fabric  of  eternal  truth,  and 
now  the  Fashion's  form  reveals  the  outlines 
of  what  could  not  be  seen  before. 
4  49 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

So  in  the  realm  of  beauty  must  we  be 
guided  by  the  minds  of  crowds.  Who 
knows  what  true  beauty  is  ?  In  different 
crowds  ideals  of  beauty  are  incredibly  diverse. 
The  Zulu  chieftain  can  see  beauty  where  no 
European  could,  and  the  -European's  ideal 
would  not  appeal  to  him.  Reason  cannot 
tell  us  what  is  beautiful,  and  therefore  if  we 
satisfy  that  love  of  beauty  which  is  in  every 
soul,  we  must  accept  the  products  of  the 
automatic  minds  of  crowds  or  set  up  an  arbi 
trary  standard  of  our  own  without  the  aid  of 
Reason.  Who  knows  but  that  the  fleeting 
standards  of  the  beautiful  which  Fashion 
changes  ere  she  gives  them  definite  form 
may  all  contain  within  their  false  proportions 
some  slight  elusive  element  of  beauty  which 
is  absolute  ?  Who  knows  but  in  some  dis 
tant  century  the  blindly  groping,  automatic 
general  mind  of  man  may  seize  upon  the 
universal  form  of  beauty,  and  fix  its  feet  on 
an  eternal  pedestal  of  truth  ? 

Though  Reason  guides  the  lonely  mind, 
5° 


VANTAGE   GROUND    OF   LONELINESS 

how  limited  is  her  sway  !  She  guides  it 
safely  while  it  keeps  within  the  field  of  knowl 
edge  ;  but  how  narrow  is  that  field  !  How 
little  do  we  absolutely  know  !  We  must  be 
lieve,  and  act  upon  beliefs  the  truth  of  which 
we  cannot  absolutely  prove.  Even  here  Rea 
son  is  our  safest  guide  and  helps  us,  if  we 
follow  her,  to  find  that  which  most  probably 
is  true ;  but  stretching  out  beyond  the  field 
of  certain  knowledge  and  reasonable  belief, 
is  the  boundless  field  of  hope  and  possibility. 
Aside  from  pointing  out  the  line  that  separates 
the  possible  from  the  absurd,  Reason  gives 
no  guidance  here. 

Can  human  hearts  ignore  this  field  and 
take  no  step  beyond  the  point  at  which  they 
must  abandon  Reason's  guidance  ?  If  they 
go  at  all  into  this  chartless  infinite,  —  since 
Reason  has  no  power  to  give  us  further 
guidance  here  than  to  show  what  may  be 
possible  and  what  absurd, —  may  not  the 
guidance  of  the  automatic  common  mind  of 
man  be  better  than  no  guide  at  all  ? 
51 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

Man's  heart  rebels  at  the  proffered  leader 
ship  of  a  blind  guide  —  a  guide  which  some 
times  makes  of  him  a  thing  of  ridicule  and 
sometimes  a  hideous  monster.  Why  should 
he  have,  within  the  field  of  mathematics,  the 
blazing  light  of  Reason,  and  in  the  realm  of 
hope  toward  which  the  agonizing  yearning 
of  his  heart  directs  him  the  uncertain  leader 
ship  of  a  blind  automaton  ?  He  would  for 
get  the  theorems  of  algebra,  and  see  as  clearly 
as  he  now  sees  their  truth  the  truth  of  all 
his  dearest  hopes. 

How  can  he  know  that  the  hope  of  crowds 
is  not  a  mere  alluring  mockery  ?  The  forms 
which  hope  takes  in  the  different  crowds  on 
earth  are  as  diverse  as  are  the  various  com 
plexions  of  the  crowds.  The  form  of  hope 
is  a  fashion  of  the  crowd,  and  many  fashions 
based  on  falsehood  have  reared  their  haughty 
heads  for  weary  centuries  above  the  prostrate 
form  of  truth. 

And  yet  within  the  realm  of  hope  the 
automatic  crowd-mind  is  man's  only  guide ; 
52 


VANTAGE   GROUND   OF   LONELINESS 

and  though  he  kneel  before  what  he  conceives 
to  be  the  throne  of  God  and  pour  out  im 
passioned  prayers  for  some  assurance  that  his 
heart's  desire  is  not  a  tantalizing  mockery,  the 
echo  of  the  empty  air  will  be  his  only  answer. 

The  crowd-mind  is  man's  only  guide 
beyond  the  pale  of  Reason,  but  though  we 
must  admit  the  blindness  of  the  guide,  it  may 
be  that  it  is  not  wholly  blind.  It  may  be 
that  the  fashions  which  endure  the  longest 
within  the  greatest  and  most  widely  separated 
crowds  contain  some  fragment  of  a  truth 
entangled  in  the  meshes  of  their  errors  to 
give  them  permanence.  It  may  be  that  the 
great  Eternal  —  whom  some  call  God,  and 
some  call  Allah,  some  Brahma,  others  Nature, 
and  still  others  the  Unknowable  —  is  making 
in  the  various  forms  which  Fashion  gives  to 
hope  in  various  crowds  the  only  revelation 
of  his  being  which  present  man  could  even 
partly  understand. 

The  automaton  that  guides  us  gropes  as 
blindly  in  the  field  of  hope  as  in  any  other 
53 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

field  j  but  if  this  formless  mind  of  crowds 
has  given  birth  to  that  which  has  so  true  a 
form  as  language,  who  knows  but  that  the  same 
blind  mind,  within  the  realm  of  hope,  may 
guide  us  to  as  true  a  goal  ?  And  as  beneath 
the  accidental  forms  of  the  most  different 
languages  of  different  crowds  the  same  eter 
nal  laws  of  truth  can  be  discerned,  who  knows 
but  that  the  widely  different  forms  which 
Fashion  gives  to  hope  in  various  crowds  con 
ceal  some  common  and  eternal  verity  ?  Who 
knows  ? 


54 


Ill 

BOOKS,    DOCTORS,    IDEALISM,    LAN 
GUAGE,    AND    GOVERNMENT 

THE  Lonely  Man's  pipe  had  gone  out. 
He    knocked    out    the    ashes,    refilled 
and  relighted  his  pipe,  and  again  settled  him 
self  comfortably  in   his  chair. 

As  he  smoked,  his  eyes  were  for  some 
reason  arrested  by  some  books  on  the  mantel, 
and  his  thoughts  taking  the  direction  of  his 
eyes,  —  which  is  somewhat  unusual  among 
lonely  men,  —  he  fell  into  a  bibliological 
reverie  which  lasted  till  his  pipe  had  been 
twice  refilled  and  had  grown  cold  after  the 
last  filling. 

55 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

There  were  not  many  books  on  the  man 
tel;  for  although  the  Lonely  Man  was  a  lover 
of  books,  he  was  not  a  very  heavy  owner  of 
them,  chiefly  because  he  was  more  willing  to 
lend  a  book  than  he  was  to  ask  for  its  return. 
Books  that  would  certainly  have  been  on  the 
shelves  of  less  critical  readers  were  not  in  his 
collection,  for  he  was  not  willing  to  interrupt 
his  reflections  to  read  a  book  from  which  he 
could  not  hope  to  get  something  commen 
surate  with  the  trouble  of  reading  it.  He 
had  observed  that  books  which  really  contain 
facts  worth  knowing  are,  in  these  days  of 
much  printing,  extremely  likely  to  be  mere 
compilations  of  better  books,  and  that  books 
which  are  not  compilations  are  apt  to  achieve 
originality  at  the  cost  of  veracity  and  exact 
ness.  He  did  not  like  to  be  led  astray  by 
the  latter ;  and,  as  to  the  former,  he  found  it 
more  interesting  to  reflect  on  what  his  own 
experience  had  taught  him  than  to  read  some 
thing  in  which  one  man  tries  to  tell  what 
another  man  knows. 

56 


BOOKS,    IDEALISM,    GOVERNMENT 

If  it  is  as  true  that  a  fool  learns  in  the 
school  of  experience  as  it  is  that  he  can  learn 
in  no  other,  the  Lonely  Man  must  have  pos 
sessed  much  knowledge,  for,  whether  he  was 
a  fool  or  not,  he  had  had  experience  of  nearly 
everything  that  a  man  can  read  about  in 
books,  and  of  some  things  that  a  man  can 
not  read  about  —  at  least  in  the  books  that 
are  commonly  read  in  good  society. 

In  fact,  as  he  himself  put  it,  he  was  a 
fiddle  every  one  of  whose  strings  had  been 
played  from  the  key  to  the  end  of  the  finger 
board.  He  had  had  nearly  every  experience 
except  that  of  being  put  into  jail,  and  he  had 
escaped  that  only  through  the  agility  with 
which  he  once  got  across  a  certain  frontier. 
From  this  it  is  not  to  be  hastily  inferred  that 
he  was  in  any  way  deficient  on  the  moral 
side.  Even  in  the  case  of  a  man  who  is  in 
jail,  innocence  is  to  be  presumed  till  guilt 
is  proved ;  and  from  a  priori  reasoning,  it 
seems  still  more  incumbent  upon  us  to  pre 
sume  innocence  in  the  case  of  a  man  who 
57 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

has  never  been  in  jail.  Especially  is  this  true 
in  a  community  in  which  a  man  can  be  im 
prisoned  for  using  profane  language  to  a  hotel 
porter — which  was  the  head  and  front  of  the 
Lonely  Man's  offending. 

The  Lonely  Man's  gaze  flitted  from  a  vol 
ume  of  Shakespeare's  plays  to  a  small  Bible, 
from  this  to  a  text-book  of  civil  government, 
and  finally  rested  on  a  small  medical  com- 
pend.  Of  course,  all  medical  compends  are 
small.  They  are  mere  abbreviated  compila 
tions  of  other  medical  books,  but  some  of 
them  are,  nevertheless,  very  useful  in  the 
hasty  reviewing  of  previously  studied  subjects. 
They  are  not  so  useful  in  the  study  of  sub 
jects  that  have  not  been  previously  studied, 
for,  while  brevity  may  be  the  soul  of  wit,  ex 
tent  is  a  more  desirable  quality  in  knowledge. 

This  particular  compend  (mused  the  Lonely 
Man)  is  a  fine  exemplification  in  medical  liter 
ature  of  much  in  little.  That  is  to  say,  it 
represents,  from  the  author's  standpoint,  much 

58 


BOOKS,    IDEALISM,    GOVERNMENT 

advertising  of  himself  by  means  of  a  little 
book,  and  from  the  reader's  standpoint,  much 
disappointment  in  an  effort  to  get  a  little 
information. 

It  was  written  by  a  hospital  interne  or  a 
physician  in  the  first  year  of  his  practice,  for 
the  purpose  of  gaining  sufficient  prestige  to 
enable  him  to  procure  a  place  on  the  teaching 
corps  of  a  medical  college.  This  fact  is  not 
mentioned  in  the  preface,  but  the  omission 
of  a  fact  from  the  preface  of  a  medical  com- 
pend  in  no  way  impairs  the  validity  of  the 
fact. 

The  immature  author  seems  to  have  said : 
"  Behold,  I  also  have  written  a  little  book,  in 
which  you  can  find  the  same  facts  that  you 
could  have  found  in  a  dozen  other  books.  I 
myself  have  neither  originated  nor  discovered 
a  single  one  of  these  facts,  or,  if  I  have,  it  is 
one  of  no  possible  consequence,  and  its  dis 
covery  was  the  result  of  an  earnest  endeavor 
on  my  part  to  do  something  that  might  attract 
attention  to  myself. 

59 


REFLECTIONS    OF   A    LONELY   MAN 

u  I  have  no  experimental  knowledge  of  the 
truth  of  any  assertion  in  the  book,  which  I 
hasten  to  write  before  the  subduing  influence 
of  practical  experience  has  caused  any  abate 
ment  of  the  enthusiasm  with  which  I  accept 
the  assertions  of  my  masters.  The  book  is 
small,  but  if  I  had  waited  for  experience  be 
fore  writing  it,  it  might  have  been  still  smaller 
than  it  is,  and,  in  the  omitted  matter,  the  facts 
of  my  own  discovery  would  have  been  most 
likely  to  be  included. 

u  The  publication  of  the  book  was  urgent, 
for  there  are  already  several  medical  com- 
pends  where  one  is  needed.  If  I  had  waited 
longer,  the  disproportion  between  the  de 
mand  and  the  supply  might  have  been  still 
greater. 

"Some  discrepancies  between  my  book 
and  a  dozen  other  equally  good  books  may 
be  found,  but  they  could  not  easily  be  avoided. 
It  must  be  remembered  that  it  is  difficult  for 
a  dozen  different  people  to  tell  the  same 
truth  in  a  dozen  different  ways,  each  of  which 
60 


BOOKS,    IDEALISM,    GOVERNMENT 

shall  be  different  enough  from  the  other  eleven 
ways  to  bear  the  stamp  of  the  author's  in 
dividuality,  and  yet  be  perfectly  true.  This 
has  been  tried  on  numerous  witness  stands  to 
the  discomfiture  of  the  witnesses.  I  trust, 
however,  that  the  deviation  of  this  book  from 
others  of  its  kind  will  appear  to  be  an  ad 
vantage  to  the  reader,  and  not  a  mere  ful 
crum  on  which  to  rest  the  lever  of  an  excuse 
for  having  written  it." 

If  any  one  who  has  ever  written  a  medi 
cal  compend  should  happen  to  overhear  my 
thoughts  (continued  the  Lonely  Man),  I 
should  hasten  to  assure  him  that  I  trust  his 
compend  is  one  of  the  few  that  are  really 
needed ;  that  if  it  is,  its  merits  and  its  date 
will  speak  for  themselves;  and  that  I  have 
really  not  been  thinking  of  him  or  his  book, 
but  of  the  book  whose  author  has  just  spoken 
for  himself. 

Of  course  this  author  has  not  actually  said 
these  things,  and  I  should  not  like  to  assert, 
where  any  one  could  hear  me,  that  it  would 
61 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

be  appropriate  for  him  to  say  them ;  but, 
however  inconvenient  it  may  be  to  be  honest 
with  one's  fellows,  there  is  no  risk  in  being 
honest  with  one's  self.  This  is  a  distinction 
which  is  often  overlooked  by  persons  who  have 
learned  the  inexpediency  of  candor;  and  con 
sequently,  from  practising  diplomacy  with 
their  fellows,  they  unconsciously  fall  into  the 
habit  of  practising  duplicity  with  themselves. 
This  is  both  unnecessary  and  unfortunate,  for 
habits  of  intellectual  honesty  are  not  only 
perfectly  safe,  but  highly  profitable. 

It  is  possible  that  it  would  be  unwise  to 
recommend  such  habits  to  all  persons  and 
under  all  circumstances ;  for  if  one  is  always 
honest  with  one's  self,  one  may  inadvertently 
be  too  honest  with  one's  fellows,  and  it  must 
be  admitted  that  absolute  honesty,  however 
sound  it  may  be  at  the  core,  is  apt  to  be  a 
little  rough  and  jagged  around  the  edges. 
Politeness  and  honesty  are  not  always  per 
fectly  compatible,  and  it  cannot  be  suc 
cessfully  denied  that  politeness  is  the  least 
62 


BOOKS,   IDEALISM,   GOVERNMENT 

objectionable  form  of  insincerity.  If  my 
friend  makes  an  assertion  which  I  know  to 
be  false  it  would  seem  monstrous  to  tell  him 
that  he  is  either  a  fool  or  a  liar,  though  that 
is  exactly  what  honesty  would  require  me  to 
do.  It  would  even  seem  unnecessarily  rude 
not  to  accept  the  absurd  assertion  and  believe 
it  pro  tempore  myself. 

Now,  while  these  observations  do  not 
explain  any  considerable  amount  of  the 
slovenly  thinking  that  is  done  in  the  world, 
they  explain  the  necessity  of  occasional  lone 
liness  in  the  case  of  those  persons  who  aim 
to  be  both  honest  and  polite.  There  is  no 
need  or  possibility  of  being  polite  when  one 
is  absolutely  alone.  Politeness  is  a  relation, 
and  therefore  cannot  exist  where  only  one 
of  the  related  entities  is  present,  and  no  vio 
lence  can  be  done  to  its  principles  in  an  envi 
ronment  of  loneliness,  by  the  most  rigorous 
honesty  of  which  the  human  mind  is  capable. 

For  these  reasons  I  find  my  chief  delight 
when,  in  the  evening,  I  can  smoke  my  faith- 

63 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

ful  pipe  and  think  my  honest  thoughts  about 
anything  in  heaven  above,  or  the  earth  be 
neath,  or  the  water  under  the  earth. 

The  Lonely  Man's  eyes  still  rested  on  the 
little  book  at  the  medical  end  of  the  mantel, 
and  his  thoughts  coming  back  from  their 
apologetic  excursion  along  the  line  of  polite 
ness  versus  honesty,  he  resumed  his  medita 
tion  concerning  medical  literature. 

A  person  who  writes  an  unnecessary  medi 
cal  compend  (he  reflected)  is  not  the  only 
writer  who  is  amenable  to  the  charge  of 
expanding  the  volume  of  medical  literature 
without  increasing  its  mass  or  enhancing  its 
value.  He  really  does  on  a  small  scale  what 
some  of  his  elders  and  exemplars  in  the  medi 
cal  profession  do  on  a  larger  scale. 

Here  the  Lonely  Man    paused  in  his  re 
flections    and    almost     blushed,    for    he    had 
written  some  things  himself,  which,  if  they 
64 


BOOKS,    IDEALISM,    GOVERNMENT 

were   not    medical,  were,  at   least   probably, 
useless. 


Perhaps  complete  originality  does  not 
exist,  he  reflected.  Perhaps  we  are  all,  in 
some  measure,  imitators ;  but  even  if  we  are, 
and  if  the  products  of  my  poor  brain  were 
superfluous,  the  reading  of  them  did  not  fall 
to  the  lot  of  overworked  doctors.  In  any 
case  if  it  is  a  misdemeanor  for  an  ambitious 
imitator  to  try  to  get  the  undeserved  reputa 
tion  of  an  author,  his  guilt  should  be  esti 
mated  by  the  size  of  his  offence.  My  books 
were  very  small. 

I  am  even  willing  to  concede  this  extenu 
ating  circumstance  to  the  writer  of  an  un 
necessary  medical  compend.  His  book  is 
also  small,  and  in  it  the  theme  changes  so 
rapidly  that  the  reader  is  not  unduly  wearied 
by  any  protracted  effort  of  attention.  It  is, 
in  fact,  almost  as  restful  as  a  dictionary. 

The  chief  offenders  are  the  writers  of  some 
of  those  ponderous  tomes  which  make  the 
5  6 


REFLECTIONS    OF   A    LONELY   MAN 

interior  of  a  medical  library  look  almost  as 
discouraging  as  the  interior  of  a  law  library, 
and  which  contain  thousands  of  facts  that  are 
cozily  nestling  in  the  luxuriant  verbiage  of  a 
dozen  other  books  of  the  same  size  in  the 
same  library. 

Now,  the  world  will  never  be  able  to  repay 
the  real  discoverers  of  these  facts,  nor  the 
army  of  faithful  physicians  who  make  use  of 
them  in  their  practice.  These  honest  fellows 
evidently  believe  that  the  faithful  performance 
of  duty  is  its  own  reward.  If  it  is,  they  are 
reaping  a  large  harvest  of  reward ;  but  if  it  is 
not,  I  fear  they  must  collect  the  bulk  of  their 
wages  in  heaven. 

Since  these  overworked  and  underpaid 
physicians  are  the  persons  who  must  read 
these  enormous  medical  books,  it  is  hard  to 
forgive  the  writing  of  a  superfluous  medical 
treatise  ;  and  my  own  researches,  so  far  as  I 
have  had  the  courage  to  prosecute  them,  war 
rant  the  conviction  that  some  of  these  books 
—  say  about  three-fourths  of  them  —  are  abso- 
66 


BOOKS,   IDEALISM,   GOVERNMENT 

lutely  superfluous,  always  were  superfluous, 
and  contain  nothing  of  any  value  whatever 
that  could  not  be  found  in  the  other  fourth. 

The  only  excuse  for  this  —  but  there  can 
be  none.  The  only  reason  for  this  need 
less  multiplication  of  medical  books  is  to  be 
sought  in  the  fact  that  medical  ethics  very 
properly  makes  it  disreputable  for  a  physician 
to  seek  to  attract  notice  through  open  adver 
tising  or  any  other  means  than  that  of  hon 
estly  trying  to  help  humanity  or  to  advance 
science.  Since  medical  science  has  been  ad 
vanced  by  some  large  books,  as  well  as  by 
some  small  ones,  the  medical  profession  is 
generous  enough  to  assume  that  any  medical 
book  written  in  reasonably  scientific  language 
is  the  product  of  another  effort  in  the  same 
direction.  Thus,  the  copyist  attracts  the 
desired  notice,  and  still  remains  respectable. 
He  may  even  attain  a  position  of  eminence 
in  the  profession,  and  thus  acquire  the  privi 
lege  of  enjoining  modesty  and  unselfishness 
upon  the  very  physicians  who  must  read  his 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

own  colossal  superfluities  and  actually  pay  for 
them. 

Whatever  apparent  cynicism  there  was  in 
the  Lonely  Man's  thoughts  had  not  been  in 
tentional,  but  had  simply  resulted  from  the 
nature  of  his  subject.  He  was  entirely  alone, 
and  therefore  there  was  no  occasion  to  think 
anything  but  what  seemed  to  him  to  be  the 
truth. 

Now  he  seemed  to  forget  the  little  book 
which  had  started  his  thoughts  in  this  direc 
tion,  while  he  slowly  puffed  at  his  pipe  and 
watched  the  blue  clouds  float  silently  to  the 
ceiling. 

We  have  not  studied  doctors  as  much  as 
they  deserve  to  be  studied,  his  thoughts  con 
tinued.  When  our  perceptive  faculties  are 
pricked  or  jolted  into  something  like  activity 
by  the  pains  of  disease  or  the  fear  of  death, 
we  become  aware  of  the  doctor's  skill,  knowl 
edge,  and  unselfishness  ;  but  after  we  have 
been  restored  to  a  state  of  bodily  comfort  and 
68 


BOOKS,    IDEALISM,    GOVERNMENT 

mental  tranquillity,  we  do  not  pay  much 
attention  to  him. 

If  we  had  paid  more  attention  to  him  when 
we  were  well  and  in  the  full  possession  of  our 
faculties,  we  might  have  noticed  in  him  some 
interesting  traits  besides  his  willingness  to 
get  out  of  bed  at  two  o'clock  A.M. 

It  sometimes  seems  that  the  doctor  be 
comes  as  different  from  other  men  in  one 
generation  as  the  Jew  has  become  from  the 
Irishman  since  Noah  began  to  bring  up  a 
family.  It  is  hard  to  tell  how  long  ago  that 
was,  for  Noah  was  a  considerable  sailor,  and 
tales  about  sailors  are  likely  to  be  tinctured 
with  a  flavor  of  romance  ;  but  at  all  events, 
it  was  a  good  while  ago,  and  all  the  racial 
differences  that  have  grown  up  among  men 
since  then  are  seemingly  overshadowed  by 
the  specific  traits  which  most  doctors  possess 
in  common  and  have  acquired  in  one  gen 
eration. 

This  may  be  a  mere  unfounded  fancy  of 
mine,  but  I  like  to  believe  it,  and  I  know 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

that  the  doctor  is  an  interesting  animal  and 
that  one  of  his  most  interesting  specific 
peculiarities  is  the  quality  of  his  idealism. 

Idealism  in  philosophy  is  one  thing,  in  lit 
erature  and  art  it  is  another  thing,  and  in 
daily  life  it  is  the  apex  of  an  ascending  series 
the  base  of  which  is  agnosticism.  An  agnos 
tic  is  a  man  who  believes  nothing  that  he  can 
not  absolutely  prove;  a  practical  man  is  one 
who  believes  anything  that  he  can  prove  be 
yond  a  reasonable  doubt ;  a  hopeful  man  is 
one  who  believes  anything  that  he  cannot 
disprove ;  and  an  idealist  is  one  who  believes 
what  he  knows  is  not  true. 

The  doctor,  in  the  philosophic  sense,  is 
apt  to  be  an  agnostic,  but  in  daily  life  he  is, 
and  must  be,  an  idealist ;  and  his  success  is 
likely  to  keep  pace  with  the  degree  of  his 
idealism.  This  is  not  strange,  for  the  naked 
facts  of  disease  and  death,  with  which  a  doc 
tor  has  to  deal,  are  not  pleasant  food  for 
thought,  and,  like  other  naked  things,  they 
hardly  seem  respectable.  The  patient  natu- 
70 


BOOKS,   IDEALISM,   GOVERNMENT 

rally  wants  a  physician  who  can  clothe  these 
facts  with  some  semblance  of  cheerfulness 
and  respectability  ;  and  in  order  to  do  this 
the  doctor  must  fashion  the  garments  out  of 
the  idealism  of  his  own  mind.  He  thus  be 
comes  on  one  side  of  his  mind  an  idealist, 
while  he  is  of  all  men  most  apt  to  be  an  ag 
nostic  on  the  other  side. 

I  should  not  even  think  about  the  illus 
trations  of  this  general  truth  if  I  were  not 
alone,  but  loneliness  carries  with  it  the  sacred 
privilege  of  thinking  about  the  most  horrible 
things  in  the  world  without  fear  of  giving 
offence  to  any  one  or  awakening  any  unpleas 
ant  thoughts  in  another  mind. 

For  example,  a  man  who  has  cancer  of  the 
liver  and  of  several  other  internal  organs  con 
sults  the  doctor  because  he  would  naturally 
like  to  get  well.  Any  one  with  such  a  disease 
would  like  to  get  rid  of  it.  The  disease  is 
likely  to  have  progressed  so  far  that  its  com 
plete  removal  would  require  the  dissection  of 
the  patient,  and  the  careful  scraping  of  several 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

thousand  organs  that  enter  into  his  structure, 
to  get  rid  of  stray  cancer  cells.  Even  then, 
immersion  for  a  few  days  in  absolute  alcohol 
would  be  necessary  to  destroy  the  vitality  of 
any  remaining  cells. 

Of  course  it  is  disagreeable  to  think  about 
such  things;  but  I  am  entirely  alone,  and 
these  are  facts,  and  the  doctor  knows,  on  the 
scientific  side  of  his  mind,  that  they  are  facts; 
but  the  patient  does  not  want  to  know  it. 
The  doctor  knows  that  the  patient  wants  to 
believe  that  he  either  does  not  have  a  cancer 
at  all,  or  that  it  has  not  yet  progressed  be 
yond  the  stage  at  which  it  is  curable  —  if 
there  is  any  stage  at  which  a  real  cancer  is 
curable. 

The  doctor  consequently  holds  out  a 
greater  or  less  degree  of  hope  according  to 
the  extent  of  his  idealism,  and  he  actually 
believes,  on  the  idealistic  side  of  his  mind, 
what  he  tells  the  patient.  Of  course  the 
patient  dies,  but  during  his  illness  he  has  de 
rived  more  comfort  from  the  doctor's  ideal- 
72 


BOOKS,   IDEALISM,   GOVERNMENT 

ism  than  from  any  other  source  ;  and  thus 
the  doctor  comes  to  carry  his  idealism  into 
the  treatment  of  all  incurable  as  well  as  all 
curable  disorders,  to  the  mutual  benefit  of 
himself  and  his  clientele. 

The  therapeutic  value  of  idealism  long  ago 
became  so  apparent  that,  in  the  early  part  of 
the  last  century,  there  sprang  up  in  Germany  a 
school  of  doctors  whose  only  resources  in  the 
treatment  of  disease  were  an  infinite  amount 
of  idealism  and  an  infinitesimal  amount  of 
medicine.  They  are  called  homoeopaths. 

The  success  of  homoeopathy  encouraged  a 
still  further  reduction  in  the  amount  of  medi 
cine  and  a  still  further  increase  of  idealism, 
and  the  result  was  Christian  Science  with  its 
various  subdivisions.  It  exploits  a  theory 
whereby  not  only  medicine,  but  all  other 
material  things — except  money  —  are  en 
tirely  eliminated  from  the  treatment  of 
disease. 

The  Christian  Scientists  are  clever  as  well 
as  cheerful  people  (mused  the  Lonely  Man), 
73 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

and  they  have  entertained  some  incurables 
and  cured  some  people  who-  were  not  sick, 
quite  as  well  as  any  one  else  could  have  done 
it.  But  when  they  imagine  that  they  are  the 
real  discoverers  of  idealism,  or  that  there  is 
anything  really  original  in  their  philosophy 
or  religion  or  whatever  it  is,  they  delude 
themselves. 

Bishop  Berkeley,  who  lived  in  the  seven 
teenth  and  eighteenth  centuries,  was  some 
thing  of  an  idealist  himself.  He  constructed 
a  system  of  philosophy  in  which  he  proved 
that  there  is  nothing  in  the  universe  but  mind 
that  can  perceive  anything,  and  that  there  is 
nothing  for  mind  to  perceive  but  ideas  and 
illusions. 

According  to  his  philosophy,  that  which 
we  childishly  believe  to  be  a  world  of  matter 
is  a  mere  complicated  but  orderly  system  of 
illusions.  When  we  think  we  see  a  tree,  we 
merely  have  an  optical  illusion,  which  is  no 
more  real  than  a  reflection  in  a  mirror.  If 
we  touch  the  tree,  we  have  a  tactual  illusion, 
74 


BOOKS,   IDEALISM,   GOVERNMENT 

like  that  of  a  man  who  thinks  he  feels  some 
thing  between  his  toes  after  his  leg  has  been 
amputated.  There  is  really  nothing  there  at 
all,  and  when  we  go  away  or  close  our  eyes 
the  illusion  itself  vanishes.  If  any  other 
mind  incorporated  in  an  illusory  body  comes 
along  to  where  we  thought  we  saw  the  tree, 
it  will  have  the  same  illusion  and  think  it 
sees  a  tree.  The  illusion  thus  keeps  pop 
ping  into  being  whenever  any  wandering  mind 
gets  within  eyeshot  of  it,  and  popping  out 
whenever  the  illusory  eye  goes  away  or  its 
mendacious  vision  is  shut  off  by  getting  be 
hind  some  other  illusion.  Thus,  so  far  as 
appearances  are  concerned,  everything  goes 
on  in  this  illusory  world  quite  as  if  every 
thing  were  real  and  permanent. 

The  good  Bishop  meant  well  enough ;  he 
merely  wanted  to  prove  the  existence  of  a 
God,  and  he  thought  this  was  the  only  way 
of  doing  it.  It  must  be  admitted  that  if  he 
had  succeeded  in  proving  his  premises  he 
would  have  rendered  his  conclusions  ex- 
75 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

tremely  probable,  for  nothing  short  of  omnip 
otence  could  attend  to  so  much  slide  shifting 
without  ever  showing  his  magic  lantern  or 
getting  caught  with  his  illusions  off  the 
canvas  when  they  should  have  been  on.  It 
would  have  been  several  times  easier  to 
create  a  world  that  would  take  care  of  itself, 
and  have  done  with  the  job. 

But  the  Bishop  proved  too  much.  Or 
rather,  he  did  not  prove  enough,  and  David 
Hume  came  along  and  proved  the  rest.  He 
took  up  the  argument  where  Berkeley  left  it, 
carried  it  to  its  logical  conclusion,  and  proved 
that  there  is  no  mind  in  the  universe,  and  no 
universe  for  a  mind  to  be  in,  —  that  there 
is  nothing,  in  fact,  but  a  string  of  illusory 
ideas  which  persistently  flaunt  themselves 
in  the  face  of  a  consciousness  that  does  not 
exist. 

Now  we  are  beginning  to  see  what  ideal 
ism  really  is ;  but  only  beginning.  If  we  go 
back  —  ideally  —  to  ancient  Greece,  we  shall 
make  the  acquaintance  of  a  gentleman  named 
76 


BOOKS,    IDEALISM,   GOVERNMENT 

Pythagoras,  who  proved  without  any  difficulty 
at  all  that  the  universe  made  itself  out  of 
numbers.  Now,  that  looks  reasonable  enough, 
for  any  schoolboy  knows  that  numbers  can 
make  a  world  of  trouble,  which  is  exactly 
what  this  world  is.  But  Pythagoras  did  not 
have  his  own  way  any  more  than  the  school 
boy  does,  for  some  of  his  compatriots  proved 
that  we  do  not  know  anything  about  numbers 
or  anything  else  —  that  we  absolutely  do  not 
know  anything  at  all  except  that  we  do  not 
know  anything.  Then  some  other  Greek 
finished  the  whole  melancholy  business  by 
proving  that  we  do  not  even  know  that. 

Now,  in  view  of  this  nihilistic  tendency 
of  idealism,  it  seems  unreasonable  to  scold 
agnosticism,  as  some  good  people  have  done, 
for  having  punctured  a  few  idealistic  soap- 
bubbles  and  cleared  the  atmosphere.  Since 
the  agnostic  believes  nothing  that  he  cannot 
absolutely  prove,  he  would  decline  to  believe 
that  a  man  who  does  not  exist  can  prove 
that  he  does  not  exist,  but  he  would  readily 
77 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

admit  that  a  man  who  does  not  know  any 
thing  can  easily  prove  that. 

We  owe  a  good  deal  of  this  wholesome 
agnosticism  to  doctors,  and  it  is  this  which 
renders  their  idealism  peculiar,  and  makes  it 
a  comparatively  safe  aid  to  more  material 
agents  in  the  treatment  of  anything  from 
smallpox  to  malingering. 

Here  the  Lonely  Man  paused  in  his  reflec 
tions,  and  his  attention  concentrated  itself 
upon  a  point  in  the  atmosphere  just  beyond 
the  end  of  his  pipe,  where  he  seemed  to  see 
the  last  word  that  had  passed  through  his 
mind. 

Malinger  (he  reflected)  is  a  beautiful  illus 
tration  of  the  expediency  of  studying  one 
language  for  the  purpose  of  learning  another. 
It  is  derived  from  the  French  word  malingre, 
which  means  in  French  to  be  sick,  and 
in  English  not  to  be  sick,  while  pretending 
to  be. 

78 


BOOKS,   IDEALISM,    GOVERNMENT 

One's  knowledge  of  French  in  this  in 
stance  does  not  seem  to  help  one  very  much 
in  understanding  English  ;  yet  there  is  a 
pretty  general  impression  abroad  that  one  can 
learn  what  English  words  mean  in  English 
only  by  studying  the  languages  from  which 
they  were  derived.  This  is  why  youths  of 
both  sexes,  who  are  desirous  of  learning 
English,  are  encouraged  to  spend  several  of 
the  most  promising  years  of  their  lives  in 
studying  Latin. 

The  Latin  language  was  good  enough  for 
the  ancient  Romans,  but  it,  like  the  Roman 
Empire  itself,  became  too  old  to  keep  up  with 
the  march  of  events.  Consequently,  after 
having  left  several  hybrid  descendants  in  vari 
ous  European  states,  being  old  and  full  of 
years,  it  died,  and  should  have  been  allowed 
to  rest  in  peace.  Its  corpse  was  a  beautiful 
one,  and,  without  having  lost  any  of  its 
beauty,  it  has  become  fossilized,  and  some 
people  study  it  simply  on  account  of  its 
beauty. 

79 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

After  Latin  had  died,  some  priests  seemed 
to  get  a  monopoly  of  all  the  learning  in  the 
world,  and,  as  there  was  very  little  of  it  in 
respect  to  its  value,  they  did  not  want  any  of 
it  to  get  away.  To  preserve  it,  they  kept  it 
concealed  within  the  beautiful  corpse  of  the 
dead  language.  This  plan  was  successful; 
in  fact,  it  was  too  successful,  for  it  almost 
killed  the  learning,  and  did  actually  cause  it 
to  remain  for  several  centuries  in  a  state  of 
suspended  animation.  Naturally,  any  one 
who  wanted  to  get  at  the  learning  had  to 
become  acquainted  with  the  beautiful  corpse. 
Consequently,  a  custom  grew  up  among 
people  who  wished  to  be  —  or  be  considered 
—  learned,  of  studying  Latin ;  and  this  cus 
tom  has  been  continued  on  one  pretext  or 
another  ever  since,  although  now  everything 
worth  knowing  —  not  to  mention  a  good 
many  things  not  worth  knowing  —  is  printed 
in  every  respectable  language  in  the  world 
except  Latin. 

Learning  gradually  recovered  from  its  cat- 
So 


BOOKS,   IDEALISM,   GOVERNMENT 

aleptic  condition  and  became  embodied  in 
English  and  the  other  hybrid  descendants  of 
Latin  which  were  not  Latin,  and  which  were 
no  more  like  it  than  an  octoroon  is  like  a 
negro.  However,  the  college  professor,  who 
is  a  good,  honest  fellow,  and  can  do  several 
things  besides  teaching  Latin,  had  become  so 
accustomed  to  teaching  Latin  and  its  dead 
friend  Greek  that  he  feared  he  could  not 
earn  his  salary  —  which  is  small  enough,  in 
all  conscience — without  spending  three  or 
four  years  almost  exclusively  in  training  each 
student  to  travel  via  the  cemetery  to  a  knowl 
edge  of  things  which  have  mostly  been  con 
troverted  or  outgrown. 

Notwithstanding  the  professor's  earnest 
efforts  to  infuse  new  life  into  the  fossil  re 
mains  of  Latin,  it  gradually  became  apparent 
that  it  was  so  dead  that  it  would  have  to  be 
put  in  a  museum  to  preserve  it,  unless  some 
other  reason  than  the  old  one  could  be  found 
for  teaching  it.  The  reason  was  found.  In 
fact,  several  reasons  were  found.  The  chief 
6  81 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

one  was  that,  as  the  professor  had  had  more 
practice  in  teaching  Latin  than  in  teaching 
anything  else,  he  could  best  give  the  student 
the  mental  gymnastics  which  is  the  main 
part  of  an  education  by  teaching  him  Latin, 

which  he  really  does  not  need  to  know, — 

and  thus  give  him  that  degree  of  mental 
acumen  that  would  enable  him,  after  leaving 
college,  to  find  out  for  himself  the  things 
which  he  does  need  to  know. 

Another  reason  was  that,  since  English  is 
largely  derived  from  Latin,  we  must  study 
the  latter  in  order  to  understand  our  mother 
tongue,  although  we  study  it  by  means  of 
our  mother  tongue  and  neglect  the  latter 
while  doing  it. 

It  is  as  if  the  good  professor  had  said  to 
the  student :  "  My  dear  young  man,  since 
English  is  your  mother  tongue,  it  is  essential 
that  you  should  understand  it.  Therefore 
you  should  not  study  it.  You  should  study 
Latin  —  a  language  which  died  several  cen 
turies  before  English  was  born.  You  must 
82 


BOOKS,    IDEALISM,    GOVERNMENT 

have  observed  that  when  one  wishes  to 
learn  one  thing,  it  is  always  best  to  study 
some  other  thing  only  remotely  related  to  it. 
When  one  wishes  to  do  one  thing,  one 
naturally  does  an  entirely  different  thing. 

"  It  is  true  that  many  of  our  present  Eng 
lish  words  have  descended  from  Latin  words, 
but  they  are,  in  orthography,  pronunciation, 
inflection,  and  meaning,  so  entirely  different 
from  their  Latin  ancestors  that,  after  you 
have  learned  the  slight  resemblances  that  do 
exist,  they  will  only  confuse  you  and  cause 
you  to  use  the  English  derivatives  in  their 
Latin  sense,  and  thus  obscure  your  meaning. 
Therefore,  you  cannot  understand  English 
till  you  have  mastered  Latin. 

"  You  will  receive  instruction  in  Latin 
through  the  medium  of  English,  and,  as 
you  do  not  understand  the  medium,  you  will 
naturally  understand  the  instruction.  One 
always  understands  best  what  is  explained 
to  one  in  a  language  which  one  does  not 
understand. 

83 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

"  Latin  is  thus  a  ladder  by  means  of  which 
one  first  climbs  to  a  knowledge  of  English. 
It  is  true  that  English  is  the  ladder  by  means 
of  which  one  first  climbs  to  a  knowledge  of 
Latin,  but,  after  one  climbs  from  the  Latin 
ladder  to  the  English  ladder,  one  easily  per 
ceives  that  one  was  really  never  on  the 
English  ladder,  and  therefore  never  did  any 
climbing,  till  one  had  climbed  off  it  to 
another  ladder  and  from  the  latter  to  the  one 
from  which  one  started. 

"  As  I  have  already  observed,  many  Eng 
lish  words  have  descended  from  Latin  words, 
and  in  their  descent  to  us  have  become  en 
tirely  different  from  the  original  Latin  words. 
Others  have  changed  very  little.  Now,  since 
we  must  use  the  descendants  and  not  the 
ancestors,  it  might  seem  most  profitable  to 
study  the  present  meaning,  inflection,  pro 
nunciation,  and  orthography  of  these  words, 
whether  they  have  changed  or  not. 

"  Nothing  could  better  show  your  inex 
perience  and  unwisdom.  The  main  fact  to 
84 


BOOKS,   IDEALISM,   GOVERNMENT 

keep  in  mind  is  that  these  words  have  de 
scended,  —  de,  down  ;  scandere,  to  climb,  — 
these  words  have  climbed  down  from  Latin 
ancestors,  —  ante,  before,  cedere,  to  go.  They 
have  climbed  down  from  Latin  that  goes  before. 
Now,  that  is  perfectly  plain.  They  have 
descended  from  Latin  words  just  as  an  ele 
phant  has  descended  from  a  fish,  and  it  is 
obvious  that  the  only  way  to  understand  an 
elephant  is  to  study  a  fish.  When  you  per 
ceive  that  the  fish  has  a  tail,  whether  you 
have  ever  seen  an  elephant  or  not  you  will 
at  once  know  that  it  has  a  tail,  and  what  it 
looks  like.  The  scales  of  the  fish  will  teach 
you  that  the  elephant  does  not  have  scales 
but  hair,  and  very  little  of  that.  From  the 
bony  framework  of  the  fish  you  will  learn 
the  exact  number,  appearance,  and  uses  of  the 
bones  in  the  elephant's  skeleton.  From  the 
gills  of  the  fish  you  will  see  at  once  that 
the  elephant  is  an  air-breathing  quadruped 
and  could  not  live  under  water.  The  total 
absence  of  a  nose  from  the  fish's  counte- 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

nance   would    lead    you    to   expect    the  ele 
phant's  proboscis. 

"Of  course,  it  might  seem  to  you  best  to 
learn  the  main  thing  first,  and  then,  if  any 
time  remains,  to  study  the  history  and  evo 
lution  of  the  thing  afterwards.  That,  how 
ever,  is  pure  boyishness.  You  must  know 
that,  since  our  precious  school  days  are  ex 
tremely  few  and  brief,  we  must  spend  them 
all  in  learning  the  non-essentials  or  we  shall 
never  have  time  to  learn  these  non-essentials 
at  all.  You  will  unconsciously  pick  up  what 
English  you  need  on  the  football  grounds,  at 
the  races,  and  from  the  newspapers  ;  and  you 
will  do  it  the  more  readily  if  you  are  not 
hampered  with  any  preconceived  ideas  of 
English  grammar.  I  especially  admonish 
you  against  frittering  away  your  time  on  so 
trivial  a  subject  as  English  grammar.  If  you 
should  ever  become  so  unfortunate  as  to 
possess  a  knowledge  of  English  grammar,  or 
of  the  exact  present  meanings  of  English 
words,  you  will  often  hesitate  in  your  speech, 
86 


BOOKS,    IDEALISM,    GOVERNMENT 

through  fear  of  speaking  ungrammatically  on 
the  one  hand,  or  seeming  odd  on  the  other. 
It  is  important  that  your  speech  should  be 
fluent  whether  it  is  grammatical  and  precise 
or  not. 

"Latin  orthography  is  so  much  like  our 
own  that,  with  the  unimportant  addition  of 
Wj  we  use  precisely  the  same  alphabet.  It 
is  true  that  we  use  it  very  differently ; 
however,  while  you  will  not  learn  to  spell 
English  words  by  studying  Latin  orthog 
raphy,  you  can  easily  conceal  your  ignorance 
when  you  go  into  business  after  gradua 
tion  by  employing  a  typewriter  who  never 
went  to  college,  and  who  will  probably 
know  how  to  spell.  As  to  your  grammar, 
many  of  your  correspondents  will  not  know 
whether  your  letters  are  grammatical  or  not, 
and  if  they  are  ungrammatical,  many  of 
your  other  correspondents  could  not  tell 
why. 

"  Not  only  is  language  an  instrument  of 
thought,  but  the  study  of  its  structure  reveals 
87 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

the  structure  and  composition  of  thought  and 
even  of  truth.  Of  course  you  could  learn  all 
this  from  the  study  of  English,  for  a  thought 
has  the  same  composition  in  all  languages ; 
but  if  you  learn  thought-analysis  from  the 
study  of  Latin,  you  will  probably  think  that 
you  could  not  have  learned  it  in  any  other 
way,  and  thus  you  will  experience  a  pleasing 
sense  of  superiority. 

"  Remember  that  language  is  an  instrument 
for  expressing  thought,  and  it  is  always  well 
to  have  numerous  instruments  for  exactly  the 
same  purpose,  —  one  of  them  might  get 
broken.  Then,  while  you  are  getting  a  col 
lection  of  instruments  for  the  expression  of 
thought,  you  will  not  be  so  increasing  the 
quantity  of  your  thought  as  to  put  a  danger 
ous  strain  on  any  of  the  instruments.  For 
this  reason  you  should  study  several  modern 
languages  after  learning  Latin,  for  nowa 
days  nobody  uses  Latin  for  any  other  pur 
pose  than  that  of  developing  ladder-climbing 
dexterity  on  the  road  to  English  or  some 
88 


BOOKS,    IDEALISM,   GOVERNMENT 

other  modern  language.     Nobody  pretends  to 
speak  it. 

"You  should  study  German,  French,  Ital 
ian,  Spanish,  and  a  few  other  languages ;  for 
you  may  some  day  go  to  one  of  the  countries 
in  which  these  languages  are  spoken,  and  want 
to  order  a  meal  and  hear  the  waiter  laugh 
at  your  French  or  German  or  whatever  it 
happens  to  be.  You  will  never  learn  to 
speak  a  foreign  language  like  a  native,  and  as 
well  as  you  should  be  able  to  speak  your 
own,  unless  you  go  to  the  country  of  that 
language  and  stay  there  for  life,  —  and  not 
even  then  unless  you  are  the  one  example  in 
a  thousand  exceptions.  But  you  may  learn 
enough  of  the  foreign  language  to  betray  your 
nationality  by  speaking  it,  and  you  will  also 
pick  up  a  few  phrases  which  you  can  con 
veniently  throw  into  anything  you  happen  to 
write  when  you  do  not  know  exactly  what 
you  want  to  say.  These  phrases  will  look 
well  and  will  have  all  the  charm  of  the  un 
known  to  the  majority  of  your  readers." 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

The  Lonely  Man  suddenly  paused  in  his 
reflections  and  looked  round  in  a  startled  way, 
for  he  had  begun  to  think  so  hard  that  he 
feared  some  one  might  hear  him.  He  knew 
that  the  knife  whose  cut  is  sharpest  is  the  one 
that  has  the  truest  edge,  and  he  was  too  tender 
hearted  to  wish  to  inflict  pain  on  a  mosquito. 
He  would  have  been  particularly  unwilling  to 
wound  the  professor,  for  he  had  known  a 
good  many  of  him,  and  had  usually  found 
him  to  be  a  pleasant,  polished,  well-informed 
man,  who,  somehow  or  other,  managed  to  do 
considerable  good  in  the  world.  He  had  also 
known  several  college  graduates  who  had 
plenty  of  thoughts,  and  could  both  speak  and 
write  them  in  good  English  without  the  aid 
of  a  typewriter  —  in  spite  of  having  gone  to 
college. 

Why  should  we  fear  so  precious  a  thing 

as    the    truth  ?     he    reflected.      Philosophers 

have  spun  out  their  brains  into  cobwebs  for 

the  purpose  of  finding  it.      Explorers  and  in- 

90 


BOOKS,    IDEALISM,    GOVERNMENT 

vestigators  have  sacrificed  their  lives  for  it. 
If  we  should  suddenly  become  convinced  that 
we  could  never  possess  it  or  know  it  in  any 
degree,  all  hope  and  possibility  of  happiness, 
satisfaction,  or  contentment  would  instantly 
vanish.  Who  would  want  to  live  or  to  have 
lived  if  all  thought,  all  belief,  all  feeling,  all 
existence,  is  a  lie  ?  Truth  is  not  wholly  un 
attainable.  We  have  actually  attained  some 
small  fragments  of  it.  We  pretend  to  be 
sincere  in  our  search  for  more.  Then  why 
do  we  surround  ourselves  with  bent  and 
strangely  twisted  mirrors  which  reflect  dis 
torted  images  of  those  realities  that  lie  nearest 

O 

to  us  ?  Why  do  we  stand  aghast  when  some 
unbidden  hand  holds  up  a  glass  that  simply 
tells  the  truth  ?  Would  it  not  be  better  to 
change  the  facts  that  do  not  suit  us  than  to 
keep  the  mirrors  twisted  ? 

Sobered  and  subdued  by  these  reflections, 
the  Lonely  Man  fell  into  a  dreamy  haziness 
of  thought,  which  some  people  call  medita- 
91 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY   MAN 

tion,  but  which  is  really  nothing  but  mental 
vacancy  of  a  greater  or  less  degree.  At  least, 
that  is  what  it  is  to  all  appearance.  Some 
thing  may  be  stewing  in  the  impenetrable 
depths  of  the  brain,  trying,  like  the  hot  water 
at  the  bottom  of  a  geyser,  to  get  itself  together 
and  rise  to  the  surface.  The  Lonely  Man 
smoked  on  with  half-closed  eyes  and  let  it 
stew.  It  was  no  concern  of  his  whether 
it  ever  reached  the  surface  or  not.  His 
thoughts  were  his  own  if  they  should  ever 
be  born  ;  no  one  would  lose  anything  if  they 
were  not.  In  lonely  hours,  when  one  takes 
the  hoodwink  from  one's  <*yes  and  lifts  the 
veil  from  things  one  hides  from  others'  eyes, 
the  thoughts  one  has  belong  to  him  alone  if 
there  is  anything  that  does. 

His  eyes  wandered  back  to  the  mantel, 
and  as  he  gradually  became  conscious  of 
the  treatise  on  civil  government  leaning  over 
affectionately  against  the  medical  compend, 
whatever  it  was  that  had  been  working  in  his 
mind  came  through. 

92 


BOOKS,    IDEALISM,    GOVERNMENT 

I  have  never  read  that  book,  he  mentally 
observed.  In  fact,  I  own  it  only  because  an 
aggressive  book-agent  once  imprisoned  me  in 
my  own  house,  in  the  cheerful  way  that 
book-agents  have,  and  the  price  of  the  book 
was  the  amount  of  my  ransom.  There  was, 
apparently,  not  government  enough  in  the 
book  to  prevent  this  high-handed  robbery  in 
broad  daylight.  I  have  learned  from  other 
sources,  however,  that  government  is  that 
which  directs  and  controls. 

Now,  everything  must  be  well  directed  and 
controlled  or  it  will  sooner  or  later  come  to 
grief.  A  billiard  ball  must  be  well  directed 
and  controlled,  or  the  game  will  be  lost,  and 
the  things  that  direct  and  control  it  are  its 
own  composition,  the  end  of  the  cue,  the  sur 
face  and  edges  of  the  table,  the  balls  it  strikes, 
and  a  few  other  simple  little  things  of  that 
sort. 

The  living  organism  known  as  a  human 
being  is  a  trifle  more  complicated  than  a 
billiard  ball,  yet  it  is  directed  and  controlled 
93 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

with  wonderful  precision  by  a  government 
which  is  only  more  complicated  than  that 
which  governs  the  billiard  ball. 

There  are  a  few  billions  of  cells  in  the 
body,  grouped  into  various  classes,  each  of 
which  devotes  itself  to  an  occupation  different 
from  that  of  the  other  classes.  Some  of  these 
cells  operate  a  saliva  factory.  Of  course,  no 
one  likes  to  mention  the  product  in  polite 
society,  but  it  is,  nevertheless,  very  useful 
and  convenient,  particularly  when  one  wishes 
to  swallow  anything.  Another  group  of  cells 
operates  a  pepsin  factory.  The  largest  man 
ufacturing  plant  in  the  body  produces  animal 
starch  and  bitters.  It  is  called  a  liver. 

The  organism  is  supplied  with  air  by  a 
group  of  cells  which  operate  a  ventilating 
plant.  Cells  of  another  group  carry  the  air 
from  this  plant  to  the  employees  in  the  vari 
ous  factories. 

Arteries  do  the  work  of  railroads ;  nerves 
perform  the  functions  of  telegraph  and  mail 
systems.  Nerve  ganglia  are  the  sub-stations ; 
94 


BOOKS,    IDEALISM,    GOVERNMENT 

and  the  main  postal  and  telegraph  office  is,  of 
course,  the  brain. 

Everything  is  admirably  governed  in  this 
organism.  Every  cell  knows  its  own  busi 
ness  and  attends  to  it.  Each  is  kept  in 
formed  of  what  is  going  on  in  the  rest  of 
the  organism,  and  governs  itself  accordingly. 
It  may  receive  its  information  from  the 
main  office  or  from  a  sub-station,  but  it  acts 
according  to  its  information,  and  does  not 
require  a  policeman  to  compel  it  to  do  its 
duty.  If  the  cells  in  one  kidney  become 
disabled,  word  is  sent  up  to  the  nearest  sub 
station  in  the  spinal  cord,  and  from  there 
it  is  telegraphed  down  to  the  other  kidney, 
which  magnanimously  does  the  work  of 
its  unfortunate  fellow  in  addition  to  its 
own. 

If  an  army  of  hostile  microbes  invade  the 
organism,  the  invaders  are  attacked  by  the 
first  cells  that  happen  to  meet  them,  and  held 
at  bay  till  the  regular  army  arrives.  The 
professional  soldiers  are  the  leucocytes ;  they 
95 


REFLECTIONS    OF   A    LONELY    MAN 

never  desert,  and  require  no  officers  to  direct 
their  movements. 

Every  citizen  is  kept  in  constant  com 
munication  with  its  fellow-citizens  by  means 
of  the  admirable  telegraph  system,  and,  being 
actuated  by  a  high  sense  of  duty,  renders  its 
services  whenever  they  are  needed,  and  re 
ceives  its  reward  without  a  lawsuit.  There 
are  plenty  of  telegraph  operators  and  mail 
clerks,  but  there  are  no  officers.  There  are 
no  kings  or  legislatures  or  courts  here,  yet 
the  government  is  perfect.  Of  course  there 
is  a  ruler  called  mind,  but  it  merely  directs 
the  whole  organism  in  its  relations  to  the 
outer  world,  and  has  very  little  to  do  with 
the  government  of  the  individual  cells ;  it 
could  not,  to  any  great  extent,  direct  them 
in  their  relations  to  each  other  even  if  it 
wished  to  do  so.  Furthermore,  this  mind 
itself  is  nothing  but  the  combined  mentality 
of  all  the  individual  cells  in  the  body.  The 
cells  are  directed  and  controlled  by  their  own 
nature  and  composition  on  the  one  hand,  and 


BOOKS,   IDEALISM,   GOVERNMENT 

by  the  conditions  which  confront  them  on 
the  other.  They  will  rest  or  work  accord 
ing  to  existing  conditions,  and  the  character 
of  their  work  will  depend  upon  their  nature 
and  the  environment  in  which  they  happen 
to  find  themselves.  These  are  the  exact 
factors  which  govern  a  billiard  ball. 

Now,  society  is  simply  a  larger  organism 
than  a  man.  A  social  cell  is  an  entire 
human  being,  and  human  beings  are  grouped 
into  various  classes  following  different  pur 
suits  for  the  good  of  the  whole  organism, 
just  as  groups  of  cells  perform  various  ser 
vices  for  the  good  of  the  individual. 

The  social  organism,  being  a  more  recent 
product  of  evolution  than  the  individual,  is 
far  less  nearly  perfect ;  but  many  people  — 
most  of  them,  in  fact  —  are  in  the  habit  of 
thinking  that  it  is  not  an  organism  at  all ; 
that  it  is  a  mere  artificial  aggregation  of  indi 
viduals  held  together  like  the  parts  of  a  clock 
and  controlled  by  a  social  pendulum  in  the 
form  of  an  artificial  political  government. 
7  97 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

Now,  it  is  a  spring  and  not  a  pendulum 
that  operates  a  clock.  The  pendulum  fur 
nishes  no  part  of  the  energy  that  moves  the 
wheels.  In  fact,  it  consumes  a  part  of  the 
energy  supplied  by  the  spring ;  and  in  some 
governments,  as  well  as  in  some  clocks,  it 
consumes  it  all. 

The  fact  that  government,  as  we  ordinarily 
see  it,  is  not  a  motive  power  must  have  been 
appreciated  by  the  gentleman  who  invented 
the  contrivance  for  regulating  the  supply  of 
steam  in  an  engine.  He  called  it  a  governor, 
although  it  supplies  no  heat  or  steam  or 
energy,  and  moves  no  machinery.  It  is 
simply  a  dead  weight  which  consumes  energy, 
and  which  is  necessary  only  because  the 
steam  is  too  stupid  to  regulate  itself. 

The  social  organism  must  have  a  governor 
or  pendulum  for  the  same  reason.  The 
stupidity  which  makes  political  government 
necessary  to  the  social  organism  is  the  stu 
pidity  which  causes  individuals  to  ignore  their 
obligations  to  each  other,  and  this  is  the 


BOOKS,    IDEALISM,    GOVERNMENT 

same  stupidity  that  makes  governments  bad. 
If  we  ever  become  intelligent  enough  to  see 
that  it  pays  to  do  right  simply  because  it  is 
right,  and  that  it  does  not  pay  to  do  wrong 
even  though  a  wrong-doer  may  escape  punish 
ment,  we  shall  not  need  much  political  gov 
ernment.  Until  we  shall  have  acquired  that 
degree  of  intelligence,  we  shall  not  be  able  to 
get  really  good  government,  and  afterwards 
we  shall  scarcely  need  it. 

Here  the  Lonely  Man  looked  cautiously 
round  to  be  quite  certain  that  he  was  entirely 
alone  and  that  his  thoughts  were  not  being 
overheard  ;  for  he  was  aware  that  there  are 
some  honest  people  who  are  so  intensely 
patriotic  that  they  would  regard  it  treasonable 
to  teach  men  to  be  decent  simply  for  the  love 
of  decency,  if  such  a  doctrine  could  possibly 
have  the  effect  of  rendering  government  less 
necessary  than  it  is.  He  was  also  aware 
that  there  is,  here  and  there,  a  man  who 
thinks  he  has  already  advanced  so  far  toward 
99 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

that  ideal  morality  which  requires  no  govern 
ment  for  its  enforcement  that  he  ofttimes 
feels  constrained  to  go  out  and  blow  a  few 
thousand  fellow-beings  into  the  Styx,  just  to 
show  the  tenderness  of  his  regard  for  the 
rights  of  others  and  the  excessive  superfluity 
of  all  government  for  such  gentle  natures  as 
his  own. 

Persons  of  both  these  classes  are  highly 
excitable,  and  about  equally  dangerous  when 
excited.  It  is  always  wise  —  and  generally 
impossible  —  to  get  them  to  wait  till  the  end 
of  an  argument  before  unsheathing  their  cut 
lasses.  For  this  reason,  the  Lonely  Man 
always  avoided  political  discussions,  and  did 
his  thinking  where  he  could  think  to  the  end 
of  the  subject  without  disturbing  his  own 
tranquillity  or  that  of  any  one  else. 

No  one,  he  mentally  observed,  who  per 
ceives  that  society  has  not  yet  become  quite 
so  perfectly  organized  as  the  individual,  and 
100 


BOOKS,   IDEALISM,   GOVE-RttMENT 


who  is  willing  to  allow  that'  pelitfcal  'govern-' 
ment  may,  for  a  time,  be  at  least  as  useful 
as  a  clock-pendulum,  should  be  considered 
a  dangerous  citizen.  But  if  any  one  should 
hear  me  think  that  the  steam  which  runs  the 
social  engine,  or  the  spring  which  runs  the 
social  clock,  may  in  the  course  of  a  few 
thousand  years,  or  less  time,  acquire  sufficient 
intelligence  to  regulate  itself,  I  might  be  sus 
pected  of  holding  incendiary  views  which  I 
really  do  not  hold  at  all. 

If  we  are  really  afraid  of  disclosing  the  fact 
that  the  pendulum  is  not  running  the  social 
clock,  and  is,  in  fact,  only  a  more  or  less 
ornamental  appendage  which  does  not  even 
wholly  control  the  clock,  we  should  take 
more  pains  to  conceal  that  fact.  The  clock 
will  surely  find  out  sooner  or  later  that,  how 
ever  automatic  it  may  be,  it  is  a  living  organ 
ism,  and  not  a  dead  clock,  and  that  its  activity 
not  only  does  not  arise  from  the  pendulum, 
but  is  even  now  chiefly  controlled  by  condi 
tions  which  the  pendulum  cannot  alter. 
101 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 


We  go  up  and  down  in  the  land  and  see 
farms  producing  all  kinds  of  crops,  and  fac 
tories  turning  out  all  kinds  of  commodities, 
and  railroads  carrying  all  kinds  of  freight,  and 
universities  teaching  all  kinds  of  supposed 
knowledge,  and  newspapers  printing  all  kinds 
of  supposed  information,  and  money  buying 
all  kinds  of  supposably  valuable  things,  and 
we  are  deeply  impressed  and  think  the  pendu 
lum  swinging  back  and  forth  in  the  clock 
case  is  doing  it  all ;  and  the  pendulum  evi 
dently  thinks  so  itself. 

The  poor  deluded  pendulum  is  not  even 
doing  a  part  of  it,  and  it  is  not,  to  any  very 
great  extent,  even  directing  it.  The  individ 
ual  man,  like  the  individual  cell  or  billiard  ball, 
is  directed  and  controlled  by  his  physical, 
mental,  and  moral  composition  on  the  one 
hand,  and  by  the  conditions  which  confront 
him  on  the  other.  Political  government  has 
some  influence  in  shaping  these  conditions, 
but  far  less  than  it  imagines.  Since  a  man 
has  more  life  than  a  billiard  ball,  and  a  little 
102 


BOOKS,    IDEALISM,    GOVERNMENT 

more  intelligence  and  conscience  than  an 
ordinary  cell,  he  is  naturally  influenced  by 
conditions  which  do  not  exist  for  the  billiard 
ball  or  the  cell.  The  most  potent  of  these 
conditions  are  self-interest,  custom,  and  pub 
lic  opinion;  and  while  the  governmental 
pendulum  is  using  its  friends  and  conciliating 
its  enemies  with  a  view  to  being  perpetuated 
or  re-elected  —  and  incidentally  drawing  its 
salary,  —  the  social  organism  is  being  really 
directed  and  controlled  chiefly  by  these  abstract 
but  extremely  powerful  factors — self-interest, 
custom,  and  public  opinion.  The  govern 
mental  pendulum  is  powerless  to  control  any 
of  these  influences,  but  it  nevertheless  amuses 
itself  and  the  rest  of  the  clock  by  enacting 
laws  which,  if  they  are  good,  would  have 
been  obeyed  by  all  decent  citizens  anyhow, 
and  if  they  are  bad,  will  be  uniformly  evaded 
by  citizens  who  are,  at  least,  fairly  respectable. 
In  the  meantime  the  criminal  classes  continue 
to  disregard  any  law  that  does  not  interfere 
with  them,  and  violate  any  law  that  does. 
103 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

Political  government  may  promote  orderly 
activity,  but  does  not  cause  it,  as  a  little  re 
flection  shows. 

Owing  to  his  nature,  a  man  must  eat ;  and 
if  he  is  too  poor  to  buy  food  and  too  honest 
to  steal  it,  self-interest  will  induce  him  to 
grow  it  if  he  happens  to  be  where  the  con 
ditions  are  suitable.  Consequently,  crops 
have  been  planted,  harvested,  and  eaten, 
under  all  kinds  of  government,  and  beyond 
the  jurisdiction  of  any.  The  results  of  sun 
shine,  fertilizing,  and  tillage  are  not  materi 
ally  affected  by  political  government  or  the 
absence  of  it ;  consequently,  agriculture  and 
stock-raising  have  existed  where  the  tick-tack 
of  the  governmental  pendulum  could  not 
even  be  heard.  Of  course,  in  such  commu 
nities  it  is  extremely  imprudent  needlessly  to 
violate  the  rights  of  one's  neighbors.  Where 
no  governmental  devices  exist  for  postpon 
ing  or  defeating  justice,  justice  is  likely  to  be 
meted  out  with  astonishing  swiftness.  The 
neighbors  of  the  horse  thief  or  the  cattle 
104 


BOOKS,    IDEALISM,    GOVERNMENT 

"  rustler  "  probably  think,  after  he  has  been 
hanged,  that  if  his  conscience  unassisted  by 
law  was  unable  to  restrain  him  from  stealing, 
it  would  not  have  restrained  him  from  worse 
crimes  if  there  had  been  any  occasion  for 
their  commission ;  and  that  it  is  more  eco 
nomical  to  prevent  crime  by  the  removal  of 
its  cause  than  to  maintain  a  government  for 
the  punishment  of  criminals  only  after  their 
crimes  have  been  committed. 

Their  reasoning  is  probably  fallacious,  but 
that  is  doubtless  the  manner  of  it;  and  it 
does  seem  difficult  to  see  how  a  man  who  is 
restrained  from  crime  only  by  his  fear  of  the 
law  can  be  converted  into  a  really  good  citi 
zen  in  any  other  way  than  by  hanging  him. 
It  seems  scarcely  worth  while,  at  all  events, 
to  maintain  a  very  heavy  or  expensive  govern 
mental  pendulum  for  his  benefit,  and  he  is 
the  only  person  who  requires  any  govern 
ment  at  all. 

Manufacture  is  as  nearly  independent  of 
political  government  as  is  agriculture,  for  en- 
105 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

gines  will  run  sawmills  wherever  men  want 
boards  and  can  get  engines,  whether  there  is 
any  political  government  there  or  not. 

The  supply  of  man's  mental  wants  is  not 
more  dependent  upon  political  government 
than  is  the  supply  of  his  physical  wants,  for 
sciences  and  languages  have  been  taught  in 
Arabian  deserts  without  government,  and  in 
some  European  countries  in  spite  of  it. 

We  are  in  the  habit  of  thinking  that  money, 
at  least,  owes  all  its  efficiency  to  govern 
ment  ;  but  that  its  value  rests  on  a  foundation 
which  political  government  cannot  influence 
is  apparent  from  the  fact  that  money  has  the 
same  potency  under  the  black  flag  of  piracy, 
where  all  governments  are  defied,  that  it  has 
in  legislative  halls,  where  all  governments  are 
made.  It  has,  unfortunately,  about  equal 
potency  in  both  places,  and  it  is  difficult  to 
see  how  the  government  which  money  can 
control,  can  control  money. 

It  does  really  seem  as  if  self-interest,  cus 
tom,  and  public  opinion  were  the  chief  fac- 
106 


BOOKS,    IDEALISM,    GOVERNMENT 

tors  that  govern  society.  Self-interest  will 
induce  men  to  try,  in  the  most  convenient 
way,  to  supply  their  wants,  either  under  or 
beyond  governments.  Custom  will  make 
them  quite  as  careful  in  the  use  of  table 
utensils  and  in  the  cut  of  their  clothes  — 
which  governments  seldom  try  to  regulate 
—  as  in  their  observance  of  the  Golden 
Rule  —  which  governments  pretend  to  try  to 
enforce.  The  public  opinion  of  a  few  hun 
dred  thousand  years  will  take  root  in  a  man 
in  the  form  of  a  conscience,  and  make  a 
good  citizen  of  a  person  who  is  capable  of 
being  a  good  citizen,  whether  he  knows  what 
a  policeman  or  a  jail  looks  like  or  not ;  and 
no  governmental  clock-pendulum  can  create 
a  conscience  where  it  is  naturally  absent. 

I  can  imagine  what  my  friend,  the  politi 
cian,  would  say  to  these  views.  u  My  dear 
sir,"  I  hear  him  say, "  such  opinions  are  sub 
versive  of  all  law  and  order.  We  must  have 
such  government  as  we  have,  for  it  is  such 
government  that  prevents  the  individuals  of 
107 


REFLECTIONS   OF   A    LONELY    MAN 

society  from  burning  each  other's  houses  and 
cutting  each  other's  throats.  In  a  republic, 
whether  the  government  is  good  or  bad  de 
pends  upon  the  character  of  the  individuals 
themselves.  They  must  be  good  citizens 
themselves,  for  they  elect  the  governmental 
pendulum  which  tells  them  how  to  be  good 
citizens,  and  compels  them  to  obey  their 
own  instructions.  Thus,  it  is  plain  that  the 
government  which  we  politicians  constitute 
is  the  only  thing  that  keeps  people  decent. 

"  We  preserve  order  and  control  society 
by  enacting  laws  which  you  can  see  for 
yourself,  in  characteristic  law  English,  in  the 
statute  books.  Every  one  is  supposed  to  know 
these  laws,  and  no  one  does ;  not  even  the 
lawyers.  We  who  make  them  do  not  know 
what  they  mean,  and  therefore  we  have  a 
supreme  court  to  tell  us.  Lest  the  court 
itself  should  not  know,  we  have  taken  the 
precaution  to  make  the  number  of  its  mem 
bers  an  odd  number,  so  that  a  majority  would 
necessarily  have  to  vote  one  way  or  the  other. 
108 


BOOKS,    IDEALISM,   GOVERNMENT 

The  vote  of  the  majority  establishes  the 
meaning  of  the  law,  and,  as  there  is  always  a 
majority,  the  court  always  ascertains  what 
the  law  means.  We  have  thus  reduced  the 
quality  of  justice  to  a  mathematical  necessity. 
"  In  this  wilderness  of  laws,  which  no 
human  being  could  possibly  remember,  you 
will  find  laws  against  murder,  arson,  theft, 
adultery,  perjury,  and  other  crimes,  which, 
although  no  layman  could  be  expected  to  find 
them,  much  less  to  know  what  they  mean, 
keep  you  from  putting  a  knife  into  your 
brother's  heart  just  from  pure  love  of  deviltry, 
as  you  certainly  would  do  if  the  laws  were 
not  there.  Of  course,  the  criminal  will  do  it 
anyhow,  just  as  he  would  if  there  were  no 
government;  but,  if  public  opinion  is  strong 
enough,  he  will  sometimes  be  caught — just 
as  he  would  be  without  the  aid  of  govern 
ment.  Instead  of  spending  a  few  minutes, 
as  a  conscientious  vigilance  committee  would, 
in  trying  —  honestly  trying  —  to  find  out 
whether  he  is  guilty  or  not,  we  will  take  him 
109 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

into  court  and  appoint  one  lawyer  to  prove 
that  he  is  guilty,  whether  he  is  or  not ;  and 
another  to  prove  that  he  is  not  guilty, 
whether  he  is  or  not.  If  the  prosecuting 
attorney  knows  facts  which  would  render 
guilt  questionable,  or  if  the  defendant's  attor 
ney  knows  facts  that  would  prove  guilt  with 
absolute  certainty,  each  will  be  expected  care 
fully  to  conceal  such  facts  in  order  that  jus 
tice  may  be  properly  administered.  In  order 
still  further  to  insure  justice,  we  select  a  jury 
of  twelve  men  who  must  be  so  intelligent 
that  they  do  not  read  or  form  opinions ;  and 
after  this  jury  has  been  properly  enlightened 
by  the  efforts  of  two  opposing  lawyers  to 
conceal  the  two  respective  halves  of  the 
truth,  it  will  be  instructed  by  the  judge  in 
everything  except  what  it  needs  to  know; 
namely,  what  the  verdict  should  be.  The 
consequence  is  that  the  verdict  is  sure  to  be 
just. 

"  We  have  taken  still  further  precautions 
to  conserve  the  interests  of  society,  by  mak- 
110 


BOOKS,    IDEALISM,    GOVERNMENT 

ing  it  possible  for  certain  high  officials  to 
pardon  the  criminal  if  he  should  happen  to 
be  convicted. 

"  Now,  since  all  statutory  law  is  intended 
to  be  a  mere  amplification  of  the  Golden 
Rule,  —  a  mere  detailed  explanation  of  the 
moral  obligations  of  the  several  members  of 
society  to  each  other,  —  it  is  plain  that  the 
making,  interpretation,  and  execution  of  the 
laws  should  be  in  the  hands  of  the  most  intel 
ligent  and  moral  men  in  the  community. 
You  must  have  observed  that  such  is  the 
case.  A  glance  at  any  legislature,  city  coun 
cil,  or  police  force  will  at  once  convince  you 
that  the  affairs  of  the  government  are  in  the 
hands  of  the  most  enlightened,  moral,  and  re 
fined  gentlemen  in  the  whole  social  organism. 
Indeed,  it  could  not  be  otherwise.  The 
habits  which  politicians  must  practice  to  ex 
tend  their  acquaintance  and  increase  their 
popularity,  and  the  associations  which  they 
must  keep  up  to  retain  their  influence,  natu 
rally  have  an  elevating  and  refining  influence 
in 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

upon  them  and  would  tend  to  exalt  them 
morally  even  if  they  were  naturally  less 
scrupulously  moral  than  they  are. 

"  Since  the  government  is  in  the  hands  of 
such  gentlemen,  it  cannot  fail  to  represent  a 
higher  standard  of  morals  than  that  which  is 
represented  by  the  general  conscience  of  the 
whole  community ;  in  fact,  by  the  universal 
conscience  of  man,  which  you  call  public 
opinion.  Of  course,  if  the  general  con 
science  can  give  expression  to  itself  in  the 
statute  books,  it  becomes  the  proper  standard, 
not  because  it  is  the  general  conscience,  but 
because  it  is  law.  You  have  noticed  how 
easily  the  voice  of  the  general  conscience 
becomes  embodied  in  the  law. 

"  Of  course,  in  monarchies,  it  is  difficult 
for  the  social  organism  to  give  complete  ex 
pression  to  its  will  in  the  government,  but 
there  is  no  difficulty  of  that  kind  in  a  re 
public.  Three  or  four  cliques  of  politicians, 
each  consisting  of  a  dozen  or  more  men,  will 
attend  to  the  matter  for  you,  since  you  can- 
112 


BOOKS,    IDEALISM,    GOVERNMENT 

not  possibly  attend  to  it  for  yourself  unless 
you  devote  your  whole  life  to  it.  Each 
clique  will  give  you  an  opportunity  to  vote 
for  one  man  for  each  office.  If  one  man 
does  not  happen  to  suit  you,  you  can  vote  for 
any  one  of  the  two  or  three  others. 

"  You  tell  me  that  you  approve  of  a  gov 
ernment  which  represents  the  greater  part,  or 
even  the  greatest  one  of  several  parts,  of  the 
sum  of  all  the  individual  wills  in  the  com 
munity,  but  that  you  would  like  to  be  assured 
of  being  able  to  contribute  the  expression  of 
your  own  will  to  the  formation  of  that  sum. 
While  you  do  not  want  the  community  to 
submit  to  your  will,  you  want  the  assurance 
that  your  will  shall  be  heard  and  added  to  the 
rest  before  majorities  or  pluralities  are  esti 
mated. 

"  This  assurance  you  have.  For  example, 
if  you  live  in  a  community  of  a  hundred  mil 
lions  of  souls  and  want  to  vote  for  your 
neighbor  Jones  for  governor,  each  one  of  the 
three  or  four  cliques  will  nominate  a  man, 


REFLECTIONS    OF   A    LONELY   MAN 

and  thus  your  worthy  neighbor  will  have 
three  or  four  chances  in  a  hundred  millions 
of  being  nominated  ;  and  in  most  communities 
you  cannot  vote  for  him  unless  he  is  nomi 
nated.  You  will  thus  have  three  or  four 
chances  in  a  hundred  millions  of  having  a 
chance  to  give  expression  to  your  poor  little 
insignificant  will. 

"If  you  would  give  as  much  attention  to 
politics  as  we  professional  politicians  who 
attend  to  nothing  else,  —  thus  furnishing  a 
beautiful  example  of  good  citizenship,  —  you 
would  have  a  still  greater  chance  of  having  a 
chance  to  give  expression  to  your  will ;  but 
it  would  be  unreasonable  to  expect  a  greater 
latitude  of  choice  than  we  give  you.  As  it 
is,  a  few  dozen  men  decide  for  a  few  mil 
lions  which  ones  of  these  millions  shall  con 
stitute  the  three  or  four  to  be  selected  from. 
This  allows  you  even  greater  latitude  of 
choice  than  can  be  enjoyed  in  an  absolute 
monarchy,  where  one  clique  has  got  complete 
control  of  the  government. 
114 


BOOKS,    IDEALISM,    GOVERNMENT 

"  The  difference  between  the  republican 
and  the  monarchical  cliques  is  that  the  mo 
narchical  are  born  of  distinguished  families, 
while  the  republican  are  bred  of  political 
bosses." 

Here  the  Lonely  Man  paused  and  listened, 
for  it  almost  seemed  to  him  that  the  stillness 
had  been  broken  by  a  harsh,  rasping  sound. 
It  was,  however,  only  the  impression  pro 
duced  by  the  last  word,  and  he  did  not  see 
how  he  could  have  selected  a  different  word. 
In  fact,  he  did  not  see  how  he  could  at  any 
point  have  altered  the  speech  which  he  had 
put  into  the  politician's  mouth,  for  he  had 
frequently  heard  him  make  what  would  have 
been  this  speech  if  it  had  been  rendered  into 
exact  English. 

I  must  admit  (he  reflected)  that  in  this 
form  the  speech  sounds  somewhat  satirical, 
but  the  satirical  effect  does  not  proceed  from 
me.  It  merely  arises  from  reducing  the 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

speech  to  language  which  shows  precisely 
what  it  means,  and  then  comparing  it  with 
the  truth. 

If  I  were  not  alone  I  should  not  consider 
the  speech  in  its  relation  to  the  truth.  It 
would  not  be  polite ;  but  in  solitude  the 
laws  of  politeness  cannot  be  transgressed 
even  by  allowing  one's  thoughts  to  drift 
toward  the  truth. 

I  should  be  unwilling  to  cause  the  poli 
tician  the  slightest  annoyance,  for  he  is  a 
proverbially  "  good  fellow,"  and  as  he  is  no 
worse  than  we  make  him,  I  really  think  he 
is  entitled  to  courteous  treatment  —  treat 
ment  more  courteous,  in  fact,  than  that 
which  he  himself  habitually  administers,  dur 
ing  the  heat  of  a  political  campaign,  to  his 
brother  politician  of  any  opposing  political 
party.  If  instead  of  thinking  what  he  has 
told  me  about  himself,  I  had  thought  what 
his  brother  politician  has  told  me  about  him, 
I  should  have  spoiled  my  mind  for  all  re 
spectable  thinking  in  the  future. 
116 


BOOKS,    IDEALISM,    GOVERNMENT 

But  I  do  not  believe  the  politician  and  his 
brother  are  as  bad  as  they  accuse  each  other 
of  being.  They  are  still  in  some  measure 
useful,  but  the  measure  of  their  usefulness  is 
less  than  they  pretend  to  believe  it  is.  The 
government  which  they  give  us  is  still,  and 
may  always  be,  in  some  respects  necessary. 
A  small  community  may  be  able  to  dispense 
with  political  government  altogether,  but  a 
large  one  cannot  till  self-interest  becomes 
something  more  than  ordinary  selfishness, 
and  public  opinion  comes  more  nearly  into 
harmony  with  truth,  and  custom  accords 
better  with  conscience  and  justice.  Already 
these  three  factors  shape  the  course  of  events 
in  any  civilized  community  to  a  far  greater 
extent  than  does  any  political  government ; 
and  their  influence  is  constantly  increasing. 
It  will  continue  to  increase  till  political  gov 
ernment  becomes  more  nearly  nominal  than 
it  now  is,  and  then  we  may  begin  to  wonder 
whether  the  influence  of  self-interest,  public 
opinion,  and  custom  will  ever  become  so 
117 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

powerful  that  it  will  absolutely  control  the 
course  of  human  events,  and  leave  nothing 
for  political  government  to  do. 

It  will  not,  till  self-interest  becomes  some 
thing  which  will  impel  the  individual  to  seek 
primarily  the  advancement  of  the  race,  and 
to  seek  his  own  advancement  only  so  far  as 
such  advancement  may  proceed  without  in 
jury  to  any  other  human  being.  It  will  not, 
till  public  opinion  becomes  so  true  and  so 
strong  that  the  individual  will  fear  it  more 
than  he  now  fears  the  punishments  of  the 
law.  It  will  not,  till  custom  becomes  more 
nearly  uniform  and  comes  so  far  into  har 
mony  with  conscience  that  private  practice 
and  public  profession  will  agree.  Then 
the  current  of  human  events  will  be  so  far 
removed  from  the  control  of  political  gov 
ernment  that  the  governmental  pendulum 
will  undergo  spontaneous  atrophy  from  lack 
of  exercise,  and  either  entirely  disappear  or 
become  so  rudimentary  that  no  good  citizen 
will  be  annoyed  or  alarmed  by  its  ticking,  as 
118 


BOOKS,    IDEALISM,    GOVERNMENT 

he  now  most  assuredly  is  by  every  political 
campaign  and  every  session  of  a  parliament 
or  a  legislature. 

In  the  meantime,  it  is  possible  that  good 
citizens  might  spend  their  time  just  as  profit 
ably  in  trying  to  educate  public  opinion  so 
that  it  will  always  be  a  safe  and  compelling 
guide  as  they  could  in  tinkering  with  the 
pendulum.  The  pendulum  likes  to  receive 
attentions;  it  thrives  on  them.  If  the  atten 
tions  are  somewhat  violent,  it  thrives  all  the 
better;  for  naturally,  the  more  violently  a  pen 
dulum  is  pushed,  the  more  violently  it  swings 
back.  If  the  pendulum  is  in  some  meas 
ure  an  organ  of  a  living  organism,  as  any 
governmental  pendulum  is,  the  exercise  has 
the  same  effect  on  the  pendulum  that  it  would 
have  on  a  muscle.  It  promotes  its  growth 
and  increases  its  strength.  Any  malcontent 
who  thinks  he  can  destroy  a  governmen 
tal  pendulum  by  attacking  its  representatives 
with  physical  violence  should  remember  that 
no  dumb  sheep  ever  stopped  a  swing  by 
119 


REFLECTIONS    OF   A    LONELY    MAN 

butting  it,  and  that  so  long  as  there  are  mur 
derers  like  himself  to  be  hanged,  there  will 
be  at  least  one  valid  reason  for  the  existence 
of  the  government  which  he  would  like  to 
destroy.  An  educated  conscience  would  re 
strain  one  from  committing  murder,  but  it 
would  not  confer  upon  one  a  relish  for 
hanging  murderers.  One  would  still  prefer, 
when  there  is  any  hanging  to  be  done,  that 
the  sheriff  should  do  it. 

However,  even  if  the  pendulum  does  like 
attention,  we  cannot  afford  to  devote  all  our 
time  to  teaching  the  politicians  how  to  teach 
us  to  be  good;  we  must  spend  some  time 
in  learning  how  to  be  good  without  being 
taught  by  a  politician,  and  how  to  feel 
ashamed  when  we  are  bad,  without  the  aid 
of  a  policeman. 

When  we  offer  to  the  politician  this  ex 
planation  of  our  indifference  to  politics,  he 
softly  smiles  in  a  sweetly  supercilious  way, 
and  mildly  expresses  his  contempt  of  a  kind 
of  social  order  that  depends  upon  an  educated 
120 


BOOKS,   IDEALISM,   GOVERNMENT 

moral  sense  instead  of  statutory  law.  It  is  a 
pleasant  little  way  of  his,  but  in  his  gentle 
derision  of  the  force  of  public  opinion  he 
forgets  that  the  only  potency  of  statutory  law 
is  that  which  public  opinion  and  custom  give 
it.  If  he  doubts  it,  let  him  enact  a  law  that 
will  be  universally  condemned  by  public 
opinion ;  and  if  he  thinks  his  laws  are 
stronger  than  custom,  let  him  try,  by  statu 
tory  enactments,  to  alter  the  style  in  ball 
dresses  or  street  costumes. 

If,  instead  of  enacting  any  more  laws 
against  obtaining  money  under  false  pre 
tences,  we  should  try  to  create  a  public 
opinion  that  would  condemn  such  practices, 
it  might  presently  become  as  reprehensible  to 
cheat  in  a  horse  trade  as  it  now  is  to  eat  pie 
with  a  knife.  Law  makes  the  one  wrong  : 
custom,  the  other ;  yet  many  a  man  who 
would  consider  himself  disgraced  for  life  if 
he  should  be  caught  in  the  violation  of  the 
custom  does  not  scruple  to  violate  the  law 
and  boast  of  it  afterwards. 
121 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

There  are  honest  fellows  who,  in  the 
manipulation  of  their  table  utensils,  do  not 
always  comply  with  the  requirements  of 
polite  usage,  and  who  still  refrain  from  cheat 
ing  in  their  dealings  ;  but  that  it  is  not  stat 
utory  law  which  restrains  these  persons  is 
evidenced  by  the  fact  that  they  are  precisely 
the  men  who  know  least  about  the  law  and 
care  least  about  its  intricacies.  They  are 
honest  simply  because  they  think  it  is  right 
to  be  honest. 

If,  instead  of  enacting  any  more  laws  for 
the  purpose  of  making  ourselves  pay  our  debts, 
we  should  get  into  the  habit  of  simply  paying 
them,  and  considering  it  immoral  not  to  pay 
them,  the  practice  of  promptly  paying  just 
claims  might  presently  become  as  nearly  uni 
versal  as  is  the  practice  of  "tipping"  negro 
waiters  and  sleeping  car  porters.  Neither 
statutory  law  nor  conscience  compels  us  to 
give  "tips,"  but  custom  does  —  and  we  do  it. 
In  our  idolatry  of  statutory  law,  it  may 
be  well  to  bear  in  mind  that  a  statute  is 

122 


BOOKS,   IDEALISM,   GOVERNMENT 

nothing  but  a  politician's  words  preserved  in 
ink  ;  its  potency  is  what  the  public  conscience 
gives  it,  and  no  more.  We  have  made  vio 
lations  of  the  moral  law  illegal  by  statutory 
enactments ;  it  might  now  be  well  to  make 
them  disgraceful,  also,  by  stimulating  the 
public  conscience.  And  if,  while  we  are 
teaching  ourselves  to  be  honest  for  the  love 
of  honesty,  we  should  have  any  time  to  de 
vote  to  politicians  and  their  laws,  we  might 
spend  it  in  weeping  at  the  spectacle  of  a 
legislature  trying,  by  laws  of  its  own  enact 
ment,  to  prevent  itself  from  accepting  bribes. 


123 


IV 

THE   SEARCH    FOR   SATISFACTION 

WHEN  the  Lonely  Man  resumed  his 
thinking,  he  fell  to  wondering  whether 
such  purely  physical  comforts  as  food,  warmth, 
and  a  good  smoke,  and  such  purely  mental 
pleasures  as  reading  and  reflection,  can  really 
satisfy  a  man. 

He  quickly  decided  that  however  much 
better  than  non-existence  they  may  make 
existence,  they  still  leave  something  to  be 
desired. 

Can  a  human  being  really  be  satisfied  by 
any  means  ?  he  mused.      I  have  never  known 
one  who  was.     At  least,  I  have  never  known 
124 


THE   SEARCH    FOR  SATISFACTION 

one  who  would  admit  it.  I  have  noticed, 
however,  that  he  who  most  loudly  proclaims 
the  vanity  of  life  clings  most  tenaciously  to 
life  and  to  its  vanities  —  especially  to  its 
vanities. 

It  may  be  (he  reflected)  that  cursing  the 
miseries  that  one  does  not  have  enhances 
the  joys  that  one  does  have.  Thus,  a  little 
dog  barks  most  savagely  at  a  big  one  when 
he  is  on  the  safe  side  of  the  fence.  He  seems 
to  intensify  his  realization  of  his  own  safety 
by  snarling  at  a  danger  which  cannot  reach 
him.  The  pessimist  may  do  the  same  thing 
for  the  same  reason;  for,  when  there  is  no 
protecting  fence,  there  is  likely  to  be  more 
running  than  barking,  among  men  as  well  as 
among  dogs. 

At  all  events,  the  comfort  of  the  body  and 
the  entertainment  of  the  mind  can  satisfy 
only  two  of  the  persons  in  the  human  trinity, 
and  man  has  a  threefold  being.  Of  course, 
anatomically,  he  does  not  have.  Anatom 
ically  he  is  only  a  body;  but,  if  it  can  be 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

avoided,  one  does  not  consider  one's  self 
anatomically  in  good  society,  which  my 
society  is. 

Man  has  a  body,  a  mind,  and  a  heart. 
This  is  not  anatomical,  but  it  is  true;  and  it 
will  not  do  to  say  that  the  heart  is  a  mere 
part  of  the  body,  and  that  the  mind  is  a  mere 
molecular  motion  of  another  part.  Anatom 
ically  this  may  be  true.  In  the  dissecting 
room  and  the  laboratory  it  certainly  appears 
to  be  true,  but  one  misses  some  things  in  the 
dissecting  room  and  the  laboratory  which  one 
notices  in  daily  life  ;  the  mind  and  the  heart, 
for  example.  And  since  one  must  have 
names  for  things  even  to  think  about  them, 
it  is  best  to  employ  the  names  in  common 
use,  even  if  the  same  names  are  also  employed 
to  denote  objects  which,  in  the  dissecting 
room  and  the  laboratory,  turn  out  to  be  mere 
organs  and  functions  of  the  body.  ' 

Mental  phenomena  are  doubtless  dependent 
upon  molecular  changes  in  the  brain,  but  they 
themselves  are  not  molecular  changes,  how- 
126 


THE   SEARCH    FOR   SATISFACTION 

ever  inseparable  from  such  changes  they  may 
be.  These  phenomena  are  the  subjective 
side  of  mind,  which  is  just  as  real  as  the 
objective  side.  Without  the  aid  of  his  own 
subjectivity,  the  new  psychologist  could  never 
interpret  his  objective  findings  in  the  labora 
tory.  The  old  psychology  had  its  uses ;  it 
gave  man  a  mind  and  a  heart,  which  he  still 
has  —  sometimes. 

And  now,  the  question  before  me  is,  Can 
man  employ  his  body  and  his  mind  so  ac 
tively  and  so  agreeably  that  he  can  be  satis 
fied  without  employing  his  heart  at  all  ? 

It  is  impossible  to  study  satisfaction  objec 
tively.  We  may  take  the  other  fellow's 
word  and  assume  that  he  is  satisfied  when  he 
says  he  is,  or  looks  as  we  think  we  should 
look  if  we  were  satisfied  ;  but  this  is  pure 
subjectivity  —  sometimes  ours,  and  sometimes 
the  other  fellow's. 

Having  arrived  at  this  conclusion,  and  con 
sidering  his  own  subjectivity  as  good  as  any, 
127 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

the  Lonely  Man  allowed  his  thoughts  to  drift 
back  through  the  past  in  search  of  a  time 
when  his  physical  and  mental  delights  were 
sufficient  to  make  him  happy  without  any 
apparent  aid  from  his  heart.  He  seemed  to 
be  finding  it,  but  in  order  to  make  a  better 
roadway  for  his  mind  he  lighted  his  pipe,  and 
in  the  clouds  of  smoke  he  followed  back  the 
past  till  it  quite  eluded  him. 

At  this  point  he  saw  himself,  a  little  wide- 
eyed  interrogation  point  —  if  an  interrogation 
point  may  be  supposed  to  have  eyes  —  emerg 
ing  from  a  deeper  past  into  whose  darkness 
he  could  not  penetrate. 

"  Ah,  I  missed  it,"  he  said.  "  I  must  think 
in  the  other  direction." 

So  he  let  the  indistinct  and  fleeting  visions 
in  the  smoke  sweep  up  to  the  less  distant 
past,  and  then  he  found  the  time  of  which 
he  was  in  search.  It  was  a  winter  of  his 
early  childhood. 

How  snow  and  cold  and  winter  storms 
had  come  to  have  the  fascination  for  him 
128 


THE   SEARCH   FOR*  SATISFACTION 

which  they  had  he  did  not  know,  but  these 
things  seemed  to  have  given  this  winter  all 
the  special  charm  it  had  ;  and  it  had  always 
seemed  to  him  that  the  witchery  of  winter 
gets  more  quickly  into  any  healthy  human 
blood  than  does  the  charm  of  any  other  sea 
son  in  the  year. 

This  winter  had  been  an  ideal  one.  Its 
days  had  been  so  cold  that  each  one  was  a 
winter  in  itself.  The  sun  had  ceased  to  be 
of  any  use  except  to  light  the  world  by  day 
and  mark  the  advent  of  the  night  by  setting. 
When  it  had  disappeared  behind  the  snow 
drifts  in  the  west,  and  its  icy  light  had  quite 
died  out,  the  wind  commenced  its  revels,  like 
some  mighty  giant,  tossing  all  this  arctic 
world  of  snowdrifts  in  the  air,  and  heaping 
up  the  snow  in  other  drifts  that  seemed  to 
please  its  fancy  better.  He  almost  seemed 
to  sit  again  beside  the  roaring  evening  fire 
and  listen  to  the  storm's  hoarse  voice  as  it 
bellowed  round  the  house  and  went  shrieking 
through  the  tree-tops.  He  saw  the  red  glow 
9  129 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

creeping  up  the  panting  stove,  as  it  bade  de 
fiance  to  the  storm.  More  wood  was  piled 
upon  the  flames,  and  when  the  iron  door  was 
opened  to  admit  the  wood,  a  flood  of  light 
lit  up  the  room  and  painted  weirdly  dancing 
shadows  on  the  wall.  He  heard  the  sweep 
and  swish  of  drifting  snow,  and  felt  the 
quaking  of  the  house  as  it  received  the  heavy 
broadsides  of  the  storm.  He  heard  the  low 
ing  of  the  cattle  muffled  by  the  rush  and 
roar  of  the  wind.  A  frightened  crow  cawed 
overhead,  as  it  was  tumbled  through  the 
upper  air.  Then  an  impish  little  tongue  of 
snow  came  darting  through  the  keyhole,  and 
he  heard  the  door  resist  the  onslaught  of  a 
heavy  blast  of  wind.  This  was  a  carnival 
of  Nature  for  the  entertainment  of  a  boy 
who  was  not  old  enough  to  fear. 

Then  while  every  night  was  cold,  not  all 
were  stormy.  Sometimes  the  moon  shone 
down  upon  a  world  as  silent  as  a  tomb  and 
whiter  than  its  marble  walls.  A  creaking 
footstep  could  be  heard  a  mile  away.  The 
130 


THE   SEARCH   FOR   SATISFACTION 

hooting  of  an  owl  would  lend  its  weirdness  to 
the  silence  and  make  the  snow-clad  trees  seem 
more  like  spectres  than  they  seemed  before. 

But  the  halo  of  glory  which  gentle  time 
weaves  about  the  past  does  not  obliterate  or 
even  obscure  the  prosaic  fact  that  the  joys  of 
childhood  are,  to  a  great  extent,  those  which 
one  shares  with  animals  and  cannibals.  They 
are  the  joys  of  eating  and  drinking.  Con 
sequently,  mingled  with  the  Lonely  Man's 
visions  of  the  outer  world's  picturesqueness, 
there  were  memories  of  those  pleasures  which 
appeal  less  to  the  imagination  than  to  the 
appetite.  There  were  visions  of  a  table 
laden  with  smoking  dishes,  whose  teasing 
fragrance  crept  under  doors  and  into  one's 
nostrils  a  half-hour  before  supper  was  ready, 
and  made  one  think  that  half-hour  a  quarter 
of  a  century.  There  were  memories  of 
things  so  good  to  eat  that  their  taste  lingered 
in  the  mouth  after  one  was  through,  and 
made  one  sorrowful  that  one  could  eat  no 
more.  It  got  into  one's  memory  and, 


REFLECTIONS    OF   A    LONELY   MAN 

in  after  years,  sometimes  made  one  wonder 
whether  the  world  had  forgotten  how  to 
cook,  or  one  had  merely  lost  the  keenness 
of  one's  appetite.  There  were  memories  of 
turkeys  in  every  stage  of  evolution  from  eggs 
to  drumsticks.  There  were  recollections  of 
irresistibly  sweet  things  that  came  out  of 
glass  jars  from  obscure  shelves  in  the  cellar, 
and  of  bags  of  nuts  half  hidden  in  the  mys 
terious  dimness  of  the  same  cellar,  and  of 
bounteous  apple-bins  and  the  insidious  fra 
grance  of  their  striped  contents  ;  and  running 
through  it  all  was  the  poetry  of  winter  and 
the  unspoiled  appetite  of  a  boy. 

He  had  found  the  time  of  which  he  had 
been  in  search,  but  this  vision  of  the  past 
was  marred  by  the  conspicuousness  of  the 
gastronomic  part  of  it.  It  was  disquieting  to 
regard  his  happiness  the  result  of  cannibalism, 
yet  how  could  he  help  it?  His  dream  of  this 
ideal  winter  of  his  childhood  had  been,  aside 
from  the  weather,  a  dream  of  cooked  animals 
and  raw  fruit.  His  chief  pleasure  seemed,  at 
the  present  moment,  to  have  been  derived 
132 


THE   SEARCH   FOR   SATISFACTION 

from  eating  these  things.  He  could  see  no 
complete  break  in  his  relationship  to  all  the 
things  that  live  and  grow  in  the  world ;  and, 
by  all  authorities,  a  man  —  or  a  boy  —  who 
eats  his  relatives  is  a  cannibal. 

We  must  eat  these  things,  he  mused,  in 
order  to  live,  for  one  cannot  live  on  air  and 
water;  and  even  if  one  could,  could  one  be 
absolutely  certain  that  inorganic  things  are  as 
dead  as  they  seem,  and  that  the  boundary  be 
tween  them  and  organic  things  is  any  more 
distinct  than  that  between  the  vegetable  and 
the  animal  world  ? 

As  his  thoughts  dwelt  on  a  universe  teem 
ing  with  living  beings  that  find  their  most 
substantial  pleasure  in  devouring  their  brothers 
and  cousins,  he  was  oppressed  by  a  momen 
tary  suspicion  that  this  world  is  not  a  felicific 
institution. 

Perhaps  (he  reflected)  hunger  is  merely  an 
unrecognized   form   of  fraternal   love,  which 
133 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

impels  us  to  elevate  the  creatures  which  we 
eat  to  our  own  exalted  plane  of  life, — which 
we  do  when  we  convert  their  substance  into 
our  own.  These  creatures  would  undoubt 
edly  enjoy  being  eaten  if  they  could  under 
stand  the  purpose  of  the  act,  and  realize  what 
they  gain  by  playing  the  passive  role  in  the 
process  of  digestion. 

This  was  certainly  a  new  interpretation  of 
brotherly  love,  but  the  Lonely  Man  could 
really  see  no  other  interpretation  of  it  that 
would  enable  him  under  all  circumstances  to 
practise  such  love.  When  he  attempted, 
however,  to  realize  in  thought  the  bliss  of 
having  that  done  to  him  which  he  was  doing 
three  times  a  day  to  ct  others,"  he  was  grate 
ful  that  there  is  no  higher  animal  than  man 
to  favor  him  by  doing  it. 

Then    it    suddenly   occurred    to  him  that 

man  is  not  so  fortunate  —  or  unfortunate  — 

as  he  appears  to  be.      He  is  finally  digested 

himself,  by  Nature.     She  gives  up  her  sim- 

134 


THE   SEARCH    FOR   SATISFACTION 

plest  substance  to  plants,  which  give  up  theirs 
to  animals,  which  give  up  theirs  to  man,  who 
gives  his  back  to  Nature,  which  (or  who)  is 
doubtless  edified  by  the  whole  process. 

"  Ha,"  he  exclaimed  aloud,  "  I  have  nar 
rowly  escaped  conclusions  that  would  shortly 
have  become  dismal.  How  comforting  it  is 
to  perceive  that  this  whole  process  of  eating 
and  being  eaten,  and  dying  and  being  born 
again  at  numerous  different  places  at  the  same 

o  L 

time  —  this  process  of  integration  and  dis 
integration  —  is  a  mere  process  whereby  the 
soul  of  Nature  (or  —  to  speak  philosophically 
—  the  thing-in-itself)  comes  to  itself!  " 

Then  supposing  that  he  knew  what  he 
meant  by  the  "  soul  of  Nature,"  and  "  the 
thing-in-itself,1'  and  "comes  to  itself,"  he 
fell  into  a  complacent  frame  of  mind  which 
permitted  his  thoughts  to  slip  back  to  where 
he  had  left  himself  destroying  potential 
trees  by  eating  hickory  nuts,  and  destroying 
actual  poultry  by  eating  fried  chicken  in 
a  little  old  farmhouse  half  buried  in  snow, 
135 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

some — ah,  never  mind  how  many  —  years 
ago. 

As  when  one  turns  to  look  a  second  time 
at  a  painting  in  which  the  first  look  revealed 
nothing  but  the  manual  skill  of  the  artist, 
so  now  the  Lonely  Man  turned  his  mental 
vision  once  more  upon  the  scenes  he  had  just 
reviewed.  He  was  not  exactly  certain  that 
his  heart  had  had  no  part  in  the  satisfaction 
which  his  memory  had  brought  to  light. 
There  began  to  steal  upon  him  a  conviction 
that  he  would  not  have  had  this  satisfaction 
if  he  had  not  found  it  in  an  atmosphere  of 
love;  and  the  longer  he  mused,  the  more 
distinct  the  conviction  became.  If  one  looks 
long  enough  at  a  great  painting,  one  presently 
sees  past  the  colored  figures  in  it,  and  into 
the  artist's  soul  that  seeks  expression  in  the 
painting  and  gives  the  beauty  and  the  mean 
ing  to  it.  So  now  the  Lonely  Man  saw  past 
the  forms  of  such  things  as  snowdrifts  and 
food,  and  saw  the  source  and  meaning  of 
their  charm. 

136 


THE   SEARCH   FOR   SATISFACTION 

From  the  dim  chaos  of  his  recollections 
there  presently  emerged  a  woman  with  a 
face  of  singular  sweetness,  from  which  the 
ravages  of  time  had  not  removed  the  beauty 
even  when  old  age  had  crowned  her  head 
with  white,  and  traced  the  record  of  her 
weeping  at  the  corners  of  her  eyes,  and 
dropped  a  blood  clot  in  her  brain  to  make 
her  blind,  and  then  another  clot  to  dim  her 
mental  vision,  and  then  in  mercy  quickly 
dropped  another  one  to  make  her  sleep  the 
dreamless  sleep.  It  was  his  mother's  face. 

What  memories  of  loving  deeds  and  of 
a  mother's  loving  tenderness  flit  through  his 
mind  as  his  fancy  plays  about  the  fireside 
of  his  boyhood  home  the  present  writer  can 
not  tell.  He  cannot  see  so  deep  into  an 
other's  soul  that  he  can  follow  fancy  far 
when  it  begins  to  play  upon  the  heart-strings; 
and  if  he  could,  he  has  not  the  skill  to  make 
another  feel  what  he  would  see  there,  for  his 
pen  is  not  the  rod  of  Moses,  which  was  said 
to  have  the  power  to  melt  a  rock  in  Horeb 
137 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

and  make  it  weep,  and  no  less  a  power  could 
do  justice  to  such  a  theme ;  and  if  he  had 
the  skill  he  would  not  use  it  to  lay  bare  a 
human  heart  before  a  world  that  is  not 
always  tender  in  its  treatment  of  such  things 
as  hearts. 

But  shall  we  say  the  Lonely  Man  has  no 
heart  because  we  do  not  see  one  ?  Does 
the  swordsman  have  no  soft  left  hand  because 
his  sword  hand  is  the  one  we  make  him  use 
most,  while  he  keeps  his  other  hand  behind 
his  back  ?  Have  we  not  been  taught  by 
both  precept  and  example  that  hearts  should 
be  concealed  as  if  it  were  a  crime  to  have 
one?  Have  not  learned  books  been  written 
to  show  that  a  man  is  ten  different  kinds  of 
degenerate  if  he  has  a  heart  at  all  ?  And 
have  we  not  so  far  profited  by  our  teaching 
that  we  hide  away  our  hearts  in  these  things 
we  call  ourselves  and  show  the  world,  while 
we  try  to  satisfy  our  hearts  with  the  vicarious 
emotions  provided  by  the  novelist  and  the 
pi  ay- writer  ? 

138 


THE    SEARCH    FOR   SATISFACTION 

But  it  does  not  satisfy  them :  it  is  like 
trying  to  satisfy  a  healthy  appetite  with  a 
bonbon.  Did  you  never  go  supperless  to  one 
of  those  receptions  where  every  one  is  well 
dressed  and  a  man  stands  holding  three  sep 
arate  dishes  in  his  hands  and  drinks  an  ounce 
of  tea  and  eats  a  biscuit  as  large  as  a  postage 
stamp  and  feebly  smiles  and  tries  to  look 
happy  while  doing  it  ?  Does  it  satisfy  ? 
No;  you  hunt  up  the  hostess  before  all  the 
restaurants  close  for  the  night  and  tell  her 
with  a  winning  little  smile  that  you  have 
had  a  delightful  evening,  and  then  you  go 
to  one  of  those  places  where  men  sit  with 
their  hats  on  at  tables  without  covers,  where 
there  is  no  carpet  on  the  floor  and  the 
waiter  calls  out  "  Brau  one  !  "  and  brings  you 
beef  and  potatoes,  and  you  eat,  and  eat,  and 
eat  till  you  have  had  enough. 

Has  your  heart  never  rebelled  in  the  same 
way  after  you  have  tried  to  feed  it  with  eso 
teric  philosophy  at  the  shrine  of  an  intellect 
dressed  in  a  woman's  gown  ?  And  have  you 
139 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

not  in  starved  desperation  sought  the  whole 
some  presence  of  the  landlady's  daughter, 
who  has  real  round  arms  and  a  pretty  face 
and  lips  that  like  to  be  kissed  and  an  actual 
heart,  even  if  her  hair  is  not  always  tidy, 
nor  her  shoes  always  laced,  nor  her  apron 
always  straight,  and  though  she  is  innocent 
of  Browning  and  never  heard  of  Emerson  ? 

Were  you  altogether  a  criminal  if  your 
feelings  went  a  little  further  than  you  in 
tended,  and  you  fell  in  love  with  her  and  had 
to  tell  her  a  few  lies  to  prevent  her  from 
falling  in  love  with  you  and  letting  you  marry 
her  and  make  her  miserable  for  life  ? 

Oh,  yes,  we  all  have  hearts  whether  it  is 
proper  and  desirable  to  have  them  or  not,  and 
they  play  grotesque  pranks  on  us,  now  and 
then,  to  punish  us  for  our  stupid  treatment  of 
them.  The  Lonely  Man  has  a  heart ;  and 
as  he  sees  his  mother's  pretty  face  bending 
over  him  —  a  boy  of  six  once  more  —  and 
feels  her  tears  fall  on  his  tender  foot  to  ease 
the  pain  she  caused  by  pulling  out  a  thorn, 
140 


THE   SEARCH    FOR   SATISFACTION 

and  hears  her  frightened  voice  at  night  inquir 
ing  why  he  groans  when  he  thinks  his  head 
will  split,  and  thinks  of  all  the  thousand  other 
ways  in  which  his  mother's  hand  and  heart 
have  given  their  only  charm  to  all  the  other 
charms  his  boyhood  home  has  ever  had,  his 
eyes  grow  dim  and  he  sighs  and  says  aloud, 
"No  satisfaction  is  complete  unless  it  satisfies 
the  heart.  However  we  may  placate  our 
selves  with  makeshift  substitutes,  there  is  no 
substitute  for  this." 

He  leaned  farther  back  in  his  chair  and 
stared  through  the  clouds  of  smoke  at  the 
ceiling,  to  compose  his  mind  for  the  business 
of  deciding  how  this  satisfaction  may  be 
found. 

Presently  he  took  up  the  theme  again  and 
reflected  that  it  would  be  unreasonable  to 
expect  a  mother's  love  throughout  life. 

In  the  natural  course  of  events  (he  mused) 
mothers  must  generally  die  before  their  off 
spring.       Even  if  they  did  not,  and   if  we 
141 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

could  have  their  love  throughout  life,  it  would 
not  always  satisfy  the  heart.  With  the  ad 
vent  of  manhood  the  heart  longs  for  more 
than  childhood  gave  it.  So,  let  me  suppose 
I  am  standing  upon  the  threshold  of  manhood 
and  am  casting  about  for  something  that  will 
satisfy  the  heart  as  fully  as  it  was  satisfied  in 
childhood. 

My  heart  is  no  longer  that  of  a  child ;  its 
satisfaction  will  no  longer  be  a  simple  matter. 
Perhaps  it  is  unreasonable  to  expect  to  satisfy 
it  at  all ;  but  why  should  it  be  ?  Childhood 
was  a  period  of  credulity  and  was  oppressed 
by  a  thousand  groundless  fears  which  the 
knowledge  of  later  years  has  dispelled.  The 
pretty  soap-bubbles  of  childhood  were  most 
disappointingly  fragile.  The  wisdom  of 
manhood  should  enable  me  to  fix  my  affec 
tions  upon  durable  things,  and  the  enlarged 
capacity  of  manhood  should  enable  me  to 
enjoy  these  things  better. 

So  I   decide   that,  the  satisfaction   of  the 
heart  being  possible  and  being  the  most  im- 
142 


THE    SEARCH    FOR   SATISFACTION 

portant  thing  in  life,  — the  only  thing,  in  fact, 
which  makes  life  worth  living,  —  the  finding 
of  such  satisfaction  may  reasonably  be  con 
sidered  the  serious  business  of  life.  I  look 
around  to  see  how  the  world  goes  about  it, 
and  I  find  that,  in  the  present  organization 
of  society,  the  most  serious  business  of  life 
consists  chiefly  in  trying  to  get  the  biggest 
piece  of  pie  for  one's  self.  This,  then,  must 
be  the  means  of  satisfying  the  heart ;  and  I 
untie  myself  from  my  mother's  apron  strings 
at  twenty-five,  —  at  twenty,  nay,  at  sixteen, 

and   get  into  the  line   at  the  pie  counter 

as  quickly  as  possible.  Never  mind  how  I 
get  in.  If  I  am  strong  enough,  I  elbow 
some  other  man  out  and  take  his  place.  My 
object  is  a  worthy  one.  It  is  the  satisfac 
tion  of  the  heart.  Therefore  I  elbow  my 
fellow-man  out  of  his  place,  as  I  could  not 
possibly  do  if  I  had  a  heart  worth  satisfy 
ing,  and  endeavor  to  get  my  hands  on  as 
much  pie  as  possible  without  any  needless 
delay. 

143 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

The  other  man  may  be  the  better  man, 
but  the  crowd  at  the  pie  counter  will  not 
think  so  if  I  get  ahead  of  him  in  the  scramble 
for  pie.  It  is  their  approbation  which  will 
make  me  as  happy  as  I  was  on  those  winter 
evenings  at  the  fireside  of  my  boyhood  home. 

The  more  pie  I  get,  the  happier  I  shall  be, 
so  I  shall  grab  in  a  way  that  will  teach  men 
how  to  grab  as  they  never  grabbed  before; 
and  I  shall  look  pretty  while  doing  it.  I 
shall  take  a  whole  pie  —  nay,  as  many  of 
them  as  I  can  drag  off  the  counter.  Of 
course  I  cannot  eat  them,  but  I  can  keep 
them  and  turn  them  over  and  count  them. 
Ha,  the  joy  of  it !  hoarding  pies  which  are 
spoiling  for  the  want  of  eating ! 

Of  course,  if  I  should  meet  my  fellow- 
creatures  in  what  I  am  pleased  to  call  society, 
I  should  not  think  of  trying  to  get  all  the  pie 
on  the  table.  I  should  be  courteous  and 
considerate  there,  and  should  feel  extremely 
uncomfortable  if  I  should  even  seem  to  try 
to  get  more  than  my  share  of  pie  or  any 
144 


THE   SEARCH   FOR   SATISFACTION 

other  good  thing  ;  but  such  social  amenities 
are  mere  relaxations  from  the  serious  business 
of  life.  They  could  not  satisfy  the  heart  as 
the  pretty  scramble  at  the  pie  counter  does. 

If  I  can  find  no  other  use  for  my  pies,  I 
shall  bribe  men  with  some  of  them  to  help 
me  to  get  more.  Then  my  pile  of  pies  will 
increase  the  faster,  and  the  pies  down  at 
the  lower  end  of  the  counter  will  begin 
to  become  scarce,  and  hungry  fellows  will 
scramble  for  them  in  a  way  that  will  stimu 
late  me  by  the  force  of  example  and  keep 
me  from  forgetting,  as  I  might  otherwise 
do,  that  a  pie  is,  after  all,  a  very  good 
thing.  For  if  I  eat  pie,  and  handle  pie,  and 
smell  pie,  and  see  nothing  but  pie,  and  dream 
of  nothing  but  pie,  and  read  of  nothing  at  a 
breakfast  of  pie  except  pie,  I  shall  need  the 
stimulus  of  other  men's  example  to  keep  my 
gorge  from  rising  at  the  thought  of  pie. 

If  it  rise  in  spite  of  me  and  I  throw  away 
in  disgust  all  the   pie  I  do   not  really  need, 
what  then  ?     Ah,  what  then,  indeed  !     ' 
10  I4S 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

The  other  heavy  pie-owners  will  not  be 
likely  to  follow  my  example,  and  therefore 
the  strenuousness  of  the  struggle  at  the  lower 
end  of  the  counter  will  not  relax,  and  the 
sight  of  this  struggle  among  men  who  are 
really  hungry  for  pie  will  keep  the  heavy 
owners  constantly  reminded  of  the  value  of 
pie  ;  and  thus,  the  grabbing  will  go  merrily 
on.  All  of  my  discarded  pies  will  be  quickly 
appropriated  by  men  who  will  not  need  them, 
and  when  I  become  normally  hungry  myself, 
as  I  presently  shall,  I  shall  be  unable  to  find 
either  my  pies  or  my  place  at  the  counter. 
Therefore,  I  shall  not  be  so  foolish  as  to  give 
up  my  place  at  the  pie  counter.  If  I  must 
choose  between  starvation  and  surfeit,  I  shall 
choose  the  latter.  I  am  not  responsible  for 
the  present  competitive  system  at  the  world's 
pie  counter,  and  though  I  may  perceive  the 
mockery  of  it  all  and  the  terribleness  of  it  all, 
I  do  not  wish  to  starve. 

When  my  pile  of  pies  grows  so  appallingly 
large  as  to  shut  out  all  hope  of  any  of  the 
146 


THE   SEARCH    FOR   SATISFACTION 

really  precious  things  of  life,  I  shall  take  a 
few  pies  off  the  top  of  the  pile  and  build  a 
university  with  them  in  which  men  shall  be 
taught  the  language  of  Atlantis  and  how  to 
get  pies. 

If,  in  spite  of  this,  I  notice  between  my 
grabs  for  more  pies  a  slight  hiatus  in  my 
satisfaction  and  happiness  which  might  be 
rilled  by  something  not  to  be  found  in  a  pie 
shop,  —  something  which  the  present  pie- 
grabbing  system  does  not  encourage,  some 
thing  which  always  did  and  always  will  satisfy 
the  heart,  —  I  shall  grab  the  harder.  When 
my  heart  calls  for  love,  I  shall  give  it  pie. 
That  will  be  both  logical  and  effective.  Who 
has  not  noticed  how  effective  it  is  ? 

If  I  do  not  make  mere  money-making  my 
profession, —  if  I  choose  a  trade,  or  agricul 
ture,  or  one  of  the  liberal  arts  or  learned 
professions,  —  I  must  still  do  the  most  stren 
uous  work  of  my  life  at  the  pie  counter. 
Whether  I  choose  carpentering  or  preaching, 
the  skill  and  energy  which  I  shall  employ  in 
147 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

the  practice  of  my  calling  will  be  as  nothing 
to  that  which  I  shall  be  compelled  to  employ 
in  order  to  get  some  other  man's  opportunity 
to  practise  it  at  all,  and  to  get  pies  by  so  do 
ing.  Whatever  my  vocation  may  be,  I  must 
follow  it,  not  for  the  love  of  humanity,  but 
as  a  means  of  enabling  me  to  get  the  biggest 
possible  piece  of  pie;  and  my  success  in  that 
vocation  will  be  measured,  not  by  the  good  I 
shall  do,  but  by  the  number  of  pies  I  shall 
be  able  to  get. 

But  suppose  this  should  not  satisfy  my 
heart,  —  and  I  begin  to  suspect  that  it  would 

not, where  shall  I  look  for  that  satisfaction 

which  is  the  source  and  foundation  of  all 
other  satisfaction  ?  If  I  cannot  stifle  the 
longing  to  love  and  be  loved,  how  shall  I 
satisfy  that  longing  ? 

I  might  love  my  fellow-men.  Ah,  but  that 
would  be  perilous  to  my  success  at  the  pie 
counter.  How  could  I  trample  on  my  fellow- 
beings  there  if  I  loved  them  ?  And  if  I  did 
not  trample  on  them  and  get  the  best  of 
148 


THE   SEARCH   FOR   SATISFACTION 

them,  what  pleasure  would  the  struggle  for 
pies  afford  me  ? 

Imagine  people  at  the  pie  counter  of  the 
world  loving  one  another  as  the  members  of 
an  ideal  family  love  one  another !  Imagine 
them  waiting  politely  for  their  turns  to  be 
served  !  Imagine  them  regarding  it  a  pleas 
ure  to  assist  their  fellows  to  get  pies  !  Im 
agine  them  leaving  the  table  when  they  have 
had  enough  !  Imagine  them  not  being  so 
abnormal  as  to  stuff  their  pockets  with  pies 
which  they  cannot  possibly  eat  or  put  to 
any  other  sane  use !  That  would  not  be 
"business." 

Then,  shall  I  be  able  to  love  those  who 
will  show  by  their  fierce  struggle  against  me 
that  they  do  not  love  me  —  whose  hands  will 
be  raised  against  me  even  as  my  hand  will  be 
raised  against  them  ? 

Up  at  the  prosperous  end  of  the  counter  I 

may    find    that    my    competitors    will    carry 

about  with  them  what  a  certain  distinguished 

Professor  at  a  certain  famous  Breakfast  Table 

149 


REFLECTIONS    OF   A    LONELY    MAN 

calls  an  atmosphere  of  grace,  mercy,  and 
peace,  at  least  six  feet  in  radius.  While  I 
am  within  the  narrow  limits  of  that  atmos 
phere,  I  may  feel  that  I  am  the  object  of  my 
fellow-creature's  good-will.  For  this  brief 
moment  the  weapons  of  warfare  will  be 
sheathed,  and  we  shall  feel  something  of  the 
fraternal  love  which  we  might,  under  other 
conditions,  feel  and  practise  at  all  times. 
When  we  meet  at  the  well-ordered  table, 
and  hear  the  ready  footfall  of  trim  servants, 
and  fall  under  the  spell  of  luxurious  sur 
roundings,  I  shall,  for  some  two  hours,  for 
get  that  we  have  spent  our  lives  in  trying  to 
snatch  from  one  another  that  pie  which  we 
now  so  gladly  share.  I  shall,  for  these  two 
hours,  forget  that  on  the  morrow  these  hands, 
which  give  the  hearty  welcome  and  the  part 
ing  clasp,  will  be  engaged  in  snatching  pie 
from  mine.  For  these  two  hours  I  may  love 
my  fellow-man. 

But  if  I  go  down  to  the  lower  end  of  the 
counter  where  the  brutality  of  the   struggle 
150 


THE   SEARCH    FOR   SATISFACTION 

is  not  softened  by  a  halo  of  good  feeling 
even  six  feet  in  radius,  shall  I  be  able  to 
love  the  fellow-men  whom  I  shall  find 
there  ? 

I  shall  find  many  men  there  whose  hearts 
are  as  large  and  as  warm  and  as  true  as  any  that 
I  shall  find  anywhere  in  this  world,  but  I  shall 
find  others  who  are  there  only  because  they 
are  less  cunning  than  I,  and  not  at  all  be 
cause  they  are  less  selfish.  When  I  read  the 
coarseness  of  their  natures  in  the  coarseness 
of  their  lives,  and  the  hardness  of  their  hearts 
in  the  harsh  lines  of  their  faces,  and  their 
hatred  of  me  in  the  cold  gleam  in  their  eyes, 
shall  I  love  them  ?  When  I  hear  some  of 
the  noisiest  of  them  curse  me  to  my  face  as 
the  author  of  a  system  which  they  as  well  as 
I  practise  ;  when  I  hear  them  preach  a  doc 
trine  of  fire  and  blood  and  hate  and  murder, 
unsoftened  by  any  trace  or  semblance  of  love 
for  any  living  creature,  shall  I  fall  upon  their 
necks  and  love  them  ?  No  !  I  shall  slink 
shudderingly  back  to  the  suffocating  atmos- 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

phere  of  my  pile  of  pies  where  men  at  least 
know  how  to  mask  their  warfare  with  a  show 
of  breeding ;  but  I  shall  not  satisfy  my  heart 
there,  nor  anywhere  else  at  the  pie  counter 
of  the  world.  There  can  no  longer  be  any 
doubt  about  that. 

Where,  then,  shall  I  seek  this  satisfaction  ? 
Some  say  they  find  it  in  religion. 

Here  the  Lonely  Man  paused  and  smiled 
wearily.  While  he  had  been  musing  on  the 
melancholy  struggle  for  existence,  he  had 
been  vaguely  aware  of  a  large  subject  that 
loomed  indistinctly  out  beyond  the  horizon 
of  clear  consciousness,  in  the  direction  in 
which  his  thoughts  had  seemed  to  be  drift 
ing.  He  had  hoped  that  this  subject  would 
be  cheerful.  It  had  turned  out  to  be  re 
ligion  ;  and,  as  he  recalled  his  childhood 
struggle  with  the  Shorter  Catechism,  The 
Pilgrim's  Progress,  Fox's  Book  of  Martyrs, 
and  the  Book  of  Judges,  he  could  not  con 
scientiously  say  that  it  always  is  cheerful. 


THE   SEARCH   FOR   SATISFACTION 

Then,  it  generally  has  a  most  inconvenient 
way  of  requiring  a  person  to  carry  about  with 
him  two  minds, —  one  for  religious  thinking 
and  the  other  for  the  practical  affairs  of  life ; 
and  since  both  minds  are  housed  in  the  same 
skull,  when  religion  slips  into  the  house  with 
out  knocking  it  is  as  likely  to  stumble  against 
one  tenant  as  the  other.  If  the  worldly  host 
should  happen  to  be  the  one  to  greet  the  re 
ligious  guest,  some  startling  things  are  likely 
to  happen. 

The  Lonely  Man  was,  in  his  own  way, 
religious,  and  he  had  the  greatest  liking  for 
many  people  who  were  religious  in  their  way, 
although  their  way  was  generally  not  his. 
He  had  an  abiding  faith  in  the  ultimate  real 
ization  of  universal  love,  and  this  had  always 
seemed  to  him  to  be  the  essence  of  any  re 
ligion  worth  considering ;  and  it  had  seemed, 
in  a  more  or  less  indefinite  way,  to  imply  an 
eternal  continuity  of  human  existence,  and 
something  like  a  divine  intelligence  behind 
the  phenomena  of  the  universe. 
153 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

But  he  had  often  wondered  if  he  was  not 
congenitally  deficient  in  that  duality  of  mind 
which  enables  a  person  to  get  along  smoothly 
with  the  mysticism  and  supernaturalism  of 
any  orthodox  religion,  in  this  world  of  most 
intense  naturalism. 

He  indistinctly  recollected  that  in  his  most 
distant  childhood  he  had,  like  a  little  atheist, 
taken  the  eternity  of  the  universe  for  granted, 
till  some  one  had  told  him  that  it  could  not 
possibly  have  been  here  if  a  Creator  had  not 
made  it  out  of  nothing  and  put  it  here,  and 
that  it  would  be  extremely  imprudent  to  enter 
tain  the  slightest  doubt-on  that  point.  Then 
he  had  immediately  begun  to  wonder  how 
the  Creator  could  be  here  without  having 
been  made  out  of  nothing  and  put  here,  and 
how  he  could  make  a  universe  out  of  noth 
ing  anyhow;  and  he  had  wondered  more  or 
less  about  it  ever  since,  and  had  sometimes 
been  impious  enough  to  wonder  if  the  mys 
tery  could  not  really  be  simplified  — for  little 
boys  at  least  —  by  assuming  that  the  divinity 
154 


THE   SEARCH    FOR   SATISFACTION 

and  the  manifestation  of  the  material  uni 
verse  are  co-eternal  and  have  some  common 
substance.  He  had  never  gone  so  far  as  to 
say  that  he  really  believed  this  to  be  true,  but 
he  was  convinced  that  if  such  a  theory  would 
satisfy  the  requirements  of  a  religion,  it  would 
be  the  safest  possible  theory  to  carry  around 
in  this  matter-of-fact  world,  for  it  would 
need  no  protection  from  those  obstinate  things 
called  facts,  and  might  be  kicked  about  all 
day  with  almost  as  little  danger  of  being 
injured  as  if  it  were  a  fact  itself. 

However  impossible  of  demonstration  the 
truths  of  religion  may  be  (he  reflected),  they 
appear  to  be  equally  impossible  of  refutation. 
Man,  therefore,  continues  to  be  a  religious 
animal,  and  since  he  must  receive  religion 
itself  by  faith,  he  opens  the  doors  of  faith  so 
wide  that  many  other  things  than  the  essen 
tials  of  religion  slip  through  the  doorway  and 
are  as  tenaciously  held  as  the  essence  of  re 
ligion  itself. 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

Some  indefinite  but  momentous  truth  sug 
gested  by  hope,  and  more  or  less  securely 
supported  by  observation  and  experience, 
slips  into  the  mind,  accompanied  by  a  large 
assortment  of  more  definite  but  less  probable 
suppositions.  The  mind  immediately  clothes 
the  truth  with  the  materials  of  the  less  prob 
able  suppositions,  and  binds  the  clothes  on  so 
securely  that  the  poor  little  truth  can  never 
get  out  to  show  its  face  without  assistance, 
and  would  probably  frighten  its  host  if  it  did. 

Now,  if  some  bold  iconoclast  comes  along 
and  begins  to  take  off  these  dead  habiliments 
to  see  if  perchance  they  may  not  conceal 
some  living  truth  which  would  be  the  better 
for  a  breath  or  two  of  air,  the  possessor  of 
the  truth  holds  up  his  hands  in  horror,  applies 
opprobrious  epithets  to  the  iconoclast,  and 
will  never  be  satisfied  till  he  has  coaxed  his 
truth  back  into  its  winding-sheet  and  made  a 
mummy  of  it  again. 

The  early  astronomers  took  off  a  part  of 
the  graveclothes  of  religion,  and  thereby  got 
156 


THE   SEARCH    FOR   SATISFACTION 

themselves  into  their  own,  more  's  the  pity  ; 
but  the  sextons  who  had  charge  of  religion's 
body  had  no  difficulty  in  rinding  enough 
other  shrouds  to  wrap  up  their  truth  again 
to  the  point  of  suffocation,  and  they  wrapped 
it  up  and  put  it  back  into  its  vault.  Some  of 
these  shrouds  were  torn  off  from  time  to  time, 
but  they  were  easily  replaced  with  others,  till 
Darwin  came  along  and  unwound  the  grave- 
clothes  almost  to  the  body  of  the  truth  itself 
and  frightened  some  of  the  sextons  clean  out  of 
the  cemetery.  Some  of  those  who  remained, 
however,  after  trying  in  vain  to  put  back  the 
clothes  which  Darwin  had  taken  off,  gave  up 
the  attempt  and  busied  themselves  with  the 
wrappings  which  he  had  left.  They  presently 
succeeded  in  making  a  very  respectable 
mummy  of  their  truth  again. 

Darwin  really  left  only  one  shroud  on 
religion,  and  that  is  the  miraculous  origin  of 
life.  Now,  some  clever  fellow  will  sooner 
or  later  come  along  and  take  off  this  shroud 
by  proving  that  living  organisms  have  origi- 
157 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

nated  from  the  operation  of  purely  natural 
forces  on  what  we  are  accustomed  to  regard 
dead  matter,  and  then,  at  last,  the  body  of 
religious  truth  will  stalk  forth  with  more 
vigor  than  it  ever  showed  in  the  past,  and 
we  shall  wonder  why  we  ever  feared  to  let 
it  show  itself  before. 

In  my  poor  opinion  it  would  be  just  as 
well  to  become  accustomed  to  this  shock 
before  it  comes.  If  we  do  not,  a  great  many 
very  good  and  very  pious  people,  finding  the 
last  rag  of  superstition  torn  from  religion,  will 
foolishly  decide  that  the  truths  of  religion 
themselves  have  been  destroyed,  and  will 
turn  into  the  hopeless  byways  of  atheism, 
without  taking  the  trouble  to  observe  that  a 
natural  divinity  may  be  just  as  infinite,  just 
as  eternal,  just  as  divine,  and  just  as  satis 
factory  in  every  way,  as  a  supernatural  divin 
ity  ;  that  a  natural  immortality  would  be  just 
as  welcome  as  a  miraculous  immortality  ;  and 
that  a  natural  love  (the  essence  of  religion) 
is  really  a  more  reasonable  thing  than  a  su- 

158 


THE   SEARCH    FOR   SATISFACTION 

pernatural  love,  which  is  apt  to  float  so  far 
beyond  the  clouds  as  to  be  rather  chilly  when 
it  comes  back  to  earth  again. 

Now,  if  some  of  those  amiable  gentlemen 
who  compose  the  theological  profession  could 
know  what  I  am  thinking  to-night,  some  of 
them  might  be  inclined  to  ignore  my  fancies 
as  the  improbable  dreams  of  a  mildly  delirious 
lunatic.  Others  might  take  a  more  serious 
view  of  them,  and  advise  a  restriction  of  my 
liberty  ;  and  the  rest  would  probably  be  frank 
enough  to  admit  that  their  own  faith  had  been 
looking  over  the  hedge  of  orthodoxy  into  the 
heretical  field  in  which  my  own  imagination 
has  been  stumbling  around.  For  ministers 
are  really  not  bad  fellows.  They  have  done 
a  vast  amount  of  good  in  the  world,  much  of 
which  has  been  overlooked  on  account  of 
some  of  their  blunders,  —  blunders  which 
were  the  result  of  the  universal  ignorance  of 
mankind,  for  which  no  one  in  particular  ap 
pears  to  have  been  responsible.  If  Cotton 
Mather  delivered  a  few  witches  over  to  the 
159 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

Devil,  it  was,  after  all,  Justice  Sewall  who 
hanged  them.  It  is  therefore  unreasonable 
to  saddle  the  whole  blame  upon  the  clergy 
men, —  although  candor  compels  the  admis 
sion  that  Sewall  had  studied  theology  before 
he  studied  law, —  and  it  is  not  fair  to  forget 
that  clergymen  have  smoothed  the  pathway 
of  many  a  poor  wretch  to  the  limitless  un 
known  and  kept  the  prop  of  faith  under  an 
important  body  of  possible  truths  that  could 
in  the  nature  of  things  have  no  better  support, 
some  of  which  may,  in  some  future  age,  have 
a  foundation  of  scientific  proof  built  under 
them. 

While  they  have  been  doing  this,  they  have 
been  the  victims  of  a  vast  amount  of  exasper 
ating  prodding  by  irreverent  laymen,  which 
prodding  they  have  generally  borne  remark 
ably  well. 

Now,  if  one  of  these  long-suffering  clergy 
men  should  happen  in  to-night  and  say, 
"  My  dear  sir,  if  you  take  away  supernatural- 
ism  you  will  destroy  religion,"  I  should  reply, 
160 


THE   SEARCH    FOR   SATISFACTION 

u  I  have  not  had  the  honor  of  taking  away 
any  of  it,  but  it  is  nevertheless  disappearing 
like  frost  in  a  July  sun,  and  religion  is  not 
being  destroyed. 

"Supernaturalism  is  nothing  but  the  gar 
ments  in  which  the  essential  truths  of  religion 
have  been  clothed  —  and  disguised.  When 
these  garments  become  too  old-fashioned  to 
be  longer  tolerated,  some  one  will  take 
them  off,  one  by  one,  and  you  must  not  ask 
what  they  will  be  replaced  with.  It  may 
not  be  necessary  to  replace  them  at  all. 
Truth  has  a  robust  constitution,  and  can  go 
about  naked  without  any  danger  of  catching 
cold. 

"  A  good  many  of  these  garments  have 
already  been  stripped  off,  and  it  would  be 
wearisome  to  repeat  the  names  of  all  those 
intrepid  fellows  who  have  done  the  stripping; 
but  you  will  admit  that  the  essentials  of  relig 
ion  have  not  suffered  by  the  process.  Noth 
ing  has  suffered,  in  fact,  except  the  geology, 
astronomy,  and  biology  of  the  Old  Testa- 
11  161 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

ment,  and  the  pathology  and  therapeutics  of 
the  New. 

"These  things  are  not  religion,  but  by 
clinging  as  you  do  to  the  only  rag  of  super- 
naturalism  that  is  left,  you  make  it  appear 
that  these  things  are  religion,  and  thus  pave 
an  easy  road  to  atheism  for  those  who  see 
these  things  disappearing. 

"  Whether  we  are  supernaturalists  or  not, 
to  any  one  who  will  open  his  eyes  it  looks 
reasonable  to  believe  that  there  is  a  divinity 
in  the  universe,  for  the  meanest  man  that  was 
ever  hanged  had  something  good,  something 
divine,  about  him ;  and  the  existence  of  this 
divinity  is  rendered  no  more  real  by  attributing 
it  to  a  supernatural  source. 

"That  intelligence  or  something  superior 
to  intelligence  rules  the  universe  seems  prob 
able,  for  the  intelligence  of  man  would  not 
enable  him  to  construct  a  world  or  a  solar 
system  or  a  Milky  Way,  even  if  he  had  the 
materials.  It  would  not  enable  him  to  con 
struct  out  of  the  materials  at  hand  a  human 
162 


THE   SEARCH   FOR   SATISFACTION 

intelligence,  and  it  does  not,  even  after  cen 
turies  of  discipline  by  the  divinity  of  Nature, 
enable  him  to  form  any  conception  of  a  form 
of  activity  that  may  be  as  much  higher  than 
man's  intelligence  as  his  own  intelligence  is 
higher  than  the  mechanical  movements  of  a 
watch.  He  must,  forsooth,  attribute  a  mag 
nified  form  of  his  own  intelligence  to  his 
Deity,  as  if  there  could  be  no  form  of  activity 
so  high  that  mere  intelligence,  however  mag 
nified,  may  constitute  the  merest  fragment 
of  it. 

"  Here  is  the  suggestion  of  divinity  enough 
for  any  reasonable  man,  and  do  you  really 
pay  a  very  great  compliment  to  this  divinity 
when  you  assume  that  the  existence  of  any 
divinity  is  so  incredible  that  we  must  turn 
our  minds  topsy-turvy  and  inside  out  in 
order  to  be  in  a  position  to  believe  in  it  ? 
This  you  certainly  do  when  you  insist  that 
the  existence  of  a  divinity  necessarily  implies 
the  conversion  of  nothing  into  something,  a 
long  string  of  miracles,  and  the  reversal  of 
163 


REFLECTIONS   OF   A    LONELY    MAN 

the  laws  of  Nature  —  which  are  an  expres 
sion  of  the  divine  will  —  in  each  and  every 
one  of  the  instances  of  divine  inspiration  that 
have  appeared  in  the  world  from  the  time  of 
Gautama  Buddha  down  to  Shakespeare. 

"  Perhaps  you  think  that  I,  being  a  lay 
man,  have  no  right  to  have  any  views  on  the 
subject  of  theology ;  but  as  a  genial  New 
England  doctor,  named  Holmes,  once  said,  I 
have  been  taking  fifty-two  lectures  a  year 
during  the  greater  part  of  my  life,  from 
orthodox  teachers  of  theology,  and  unless  my 
instructors  have  been  utterly  incompetent,  I 
should  now  be  familiar  enough  with  the  sub 
ject  to  be  entitled  to  an  opinion  on  it.  If, 
in  view  of  this  long  course  of  instruction, 
you  attach  enough  importance  to  my  opinion 
to  ask  me  how  I  can  prove  the  existence  of 
a  natural  divinity,  I  shall  admit  that  I  can 
not  do  it  as  I  can  prove  one  of  Euclid's 
propositions,  —  if  I  have  not  forgotten  my 
geometry, —  for  I  have  not  been  instructed 
to  look  for  a  natural  divinity.  But  I  insist 
164 


THE   SEARCH    FOR   SATISFACTION 

that  in  the  present  state  of  knowledge,  the 
existence  of  such  a  divinity  cannot  be  dis 
proved,  and  that  every  advance  of  knowledge 
has  rendered  it  more  probable. 

"  I  ask  you  if  you  can  say  as  much  for 
your  non-natural  divinity,  the  proof  of  whose 
existence  consists,  by  your  own  frequent  and 
emphatic  admissions,  in  the  denial  of  the  per 
manence  of  the  universe  and  the  uniformity 
of  Nature,  —  both  of  which  are  being  ren 
dered  more  and  more  undeniable  by  science 
and  philosophy,  and  really  constitute  the  only 
satisfactory  evidence  of  divinity  that  we 
have. 

"  Can  you  explain  why  a  derangement  of 
Nature  in  the  form  of  an  incredible  miracle 
is  evidence  of  a  better  kind  of  omnipotence 
than  that  to  the  existence  of  which  the  ob 
vious  orderliness  of  Nature  testifies  ? 

"  Do  you  ask  how  life  got  into  the  world  ? 
I  do  not  know.  Does  supernaturalism  ex 
plain  how  life  got  into  the  world  ?  It  only 
tells  us  it  did  get  into  the  world,  which  is 

165 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

more  than  it  can  prove ;  for  we  only  know 
that  life  is  here,  and  do  not  know  at  all  that 
it  was  not  always  here. 

u  Are  we  at  all  certain  that  the  line  which 
we  have  drawn  between  living  things  and 
dead  things  is  a  valid  boundary,  and  that  it 
really  separates  these  two  classes  of  things 
any  more  than  our  arbitrary  classification  of 
vegetables  and  animals  separates  them  ? 

"  Does  man  really  possess  any  property  or 
attribute  that  is  not  vaguely  shadowed  forth 
in  those  forms  of  matter  which  we  call  dead  ? 

"  Does  man  have  a  definite,  complex  fig 
ure  ?  So  does  a  piece  of  lime,  but  its  figure 
is  less  definite  and  less  complex  than  that  of 
man. 

"  Does  man's  body  execute  definite  and 
complex  movements  ?  So  does  a  piece  of 
lime,  but  the  movements  which  it  executes 
are  less  definite  and  less  complex  than  those 
of  a  man. 

"  Does   the   substance    of   a    man's    body 
undergo  changes  which  are  definite  and  com- 
166 


THE   SEARCH   FOR   SATISFACTION 

plex  ?  So  does  the  substance  of  a  piece  of 
lime,  but  the  changes  which  its  substance 
undergoes  are  less  definite  and  less  complex. 

"  Man  has  no  physical  or  chemical  prop 
erty  that  does  not  exist  in  some  simple  and 
indefinite  form  in  the  inorganic  world.  Of 
course,  physical  and  chemical  properties  are 
not  vital,  but  when  we  follow  them  from 
man  down  through  simpler  and  simpler  forms 
of  living  beings  and  on  into  the  inorganic 
world,  and  when  we  see  how  those  properties 
which  are  vital  lose  in  definiteness  and  com 
plexity  in  the  same  gradual  way  as  we  de 
scend  from  man  to  the  lowest  living  beings, 

are  we  certain  that  these  vital  properties 

really   cease    to    exist   where    they    seem    to 
vanish  ? 

"  Sensibility,  motility,  assimilation,  and  re 
production  are  the  four  chief  vital  properties. 
When  we  examine  them  we  shall  find  that 
the  definiteness  and  the  complexity  of  their 
manifestation  gradually  fade  away  as  we 
descend  to  lower  and  lower  orders  of  living 
167 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

beings  j  and  when  we  reach  the  amoeba, 
whose  whole  body  is  a  single  cell,  and  is  all 
brain,  all  stomach,  all  legs,  and  all  a  repro 
ductive  apparatus,  we  shall  hardly  be  able  to 
realize  that  the  life  which  this  cell  has  is  a 
simple,  indefinite  manifestation  of  exactly  the 
same  kind  of  life  as  that  which  man  has ;  yet 
there  is  no  difference  between  the  life  of  a 
man  and  that  of  the  amoeba,  except  a  differ 
ence  of  degree.  The  assimilation,  mentality 
(or  sensibility),  motility,  and  reproduction  of 
the  amoeba  are  the  same  vital  characteristics 
as  those  of  man. 

"  Now,  is  there  a  less  gap  between  the 
birth  of  a  child  and  that  of  a  single  cell  than 
there  is  between  the  birth  of  the  latter  and 
that  of  a  crystal  of  snow  ? 

"  Is  it  further  from  the  motility  of  a  single 
cell  to  the  movement  of  a  magnetic  needle 
than  it  is  from  the  violin  playing  of  a  Bee 
thoven  to  the  movement  of  the  cell  ? 

"  If  the  turning  of  a  leaf  toward  the  light 
reveals  in  the  leaf  a  mentality  which  is  merely 
168 


THE   SEARCH   FOR   SATISFACTION 

a  vastly  remote  analogue  of  the  mentality  of 
man,  do  not  the  chemical  affinities  of  car 
bon,  phosphorus,  and  oxygen  reveal  in  them 
something  that  is  merely  a  vastly  remote 
analogue  of  the  mentality  of  the  leaf? 

"  If  the  vast  difference  between  man  and 
the  single  cell  is  a  mere  difference  of  degree, 
how  do  we  know  that  the  difference  between 
the  living  cell  and  a  grain  of  gunpowder  is 
one  of  kind  ? 

u  And  now,  if  the  most  daring  effort  of 
my  imagination  cannot  awaken  in  your  mind 
the  faintest  suspicion  of  life  in  inorganic 
matter,  please  do  not  regard  your  unbelief 
an  offence  to  me,  for  you  will  notice  that  I 
have  not  said  that  I  myself  believe  the  thing 
to  which  my  questions  point." 

Here  the  Lonely  Man  smoked  thoughtfully 
for  a  few  moments  as  if  he  were  pondering 
whether  to  follow  out  his  present  train  of 
thoughts  to  their  logical  conclusion.  He 
quickly  decided  that  he  had  already  gone  too 
169 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

far  to   retreat,  and   that   it   would   be   more 
interesting  to   go   on. 

If  I  should  ask  a  scientific  materialist,  who 
believes  in  nothing  but  matter  and  motion, 
whether  there  is  the  slightest  reason  to  be 
lieve  that  there  is  anything  akin  to  life  in 
inorganic  matter,  he  would  doubtless  say, 
without  the  least  hesitation,  that  there  is  not. 
If  I  should  ask  him  whether  there  is  life  in 
the  substance  of  an  amoeba,  he  would  say 
that  there  is,  although  the  substance  of  the 
amoeba's  body  consists  of  exactly  the  same 
elements  as  those  which  abound  in  the  in 
organic  world.  If  I  should  ask  him  why 
the  matter  in  the  amoeba's  body  is  alive, 
while  the  same  matter  in  the  inorganic  world 
is  dead,  he  would  say  that  in  the  former  case 
the  matter  is  organized,  while  in  the  latter 
case  it  is  not. 

Thus  the  only  thing  that  distinguishes 
living  matter  from  dead  matter  is  organiza 
tion  ;  yet  the  organization  of  the  amoeba  is 
170 


THE   SEARCH    FOR   SATISFACTION 

not  the  "  state  of  being  furnished  with  or 
gans,"  for  the  amoeba,  being  a  single  cell,  has 
no  organs.  Its  organization  is  nothing  but 
definiteness  and  complexity  of  structure. 

The  more  definite  and  complex  the  struc 
ture  of  any  organism  is,  the  higher  is  the 
type  of  that  organism's  life.  Thus,  the  life 
of  a  fish  is  vastly  higher  than  that  of  an 
amoeba,  for  the  fish  consists  of  billions  of 
cells,  each  one  of  which  is  as  complex  as  the 
amoeba's  whole  body ;  and  in  the  fish  these 
cells  are  differentiated  into  hundreds  of  definite 
organs  and  structures.  The  life  of  man  is 
the  highest  type  of  life  that  we  know,  for 
man's  organization  is  more  definite  and  com 
plex  than  that  of  any  other  known  creature. 
His  mentality  is,  therefore,  higher  than  that 
of  any  other  known  creature,  for  mentality 
is  one  of  the  vital  phenomena,  and  obeys  the 
same  law  that  fixes  the  plane  of  the  other 
vital  phenomena.  They  are  all  highest  in 
the  most  highly  organized  creatures,  and 
lowest  in  the  simplest  creatures. 
171 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

Now  (mused  the  Lonely  Man)  a  biologist 
would  not  deny  any  of  these  propositions. 
He  might  wish  to  word  them  differently. 
Instead  of  "definiteness  and  complexity  of 
structure,"  he  might  wish  to  say  "  definite, 
coherent  heterogeneity,"  but  these  words 
mean  practically  the  same  thing  and  they 
hurt  one's  brain.  The  words  which  I  have 
chosen  are  bad  enough. 

Now,  since  the  plane  of  an  organism's 
mentality  is  fixed  by  the  definiteness  and 
complexity  of  that  organism's  structure,  we 
should  expect  beings  more  highly  organized 
than  man  to  have  mentality  of  a  higher  type 
than  man's  mentality.  If  these  beings  were 
as  much  more  highly  organized  than  man  as 
man  is  more  highly  organized  than  an  amoeba, 
we  should  expect  their  mentality  to  be  as 
much  higher  than  man's  as  his  is  higher  than 
the  faint  mentality  of  a  single  cell.  Again, 
as  the  appearance  of  man  is  wholly  different 
from  that  of  an  amoeba  or  a  tubercle  bacillus, 
we  should  expect  beings  vastly  superior  to 
172 


THE    SEARCH    FOR  SATISFACTION 

man     to    be    vastly    different    from    him    in 
appearance. 

Now  I  begin  to  see  whither  my  thoughts 
are  leading  me.  The  thinking  has  been 
rather  hard,  but  the  result  of  it  will  be 
interesting. 

Thus  far  we  have  kept  to  known  facts. 
Now  I  must  create  in  my  imagination  some 
beings  that  are  as  much  more  highly  organ 
ized  than  man  as  man  is  more  highly  organ 
ized  than  a  mushroom.  Necessarily,  their 
mentality  will  be  as  much  higher  than  man's 
as  his  is  higher  than  the  mentality  of  the 
mushroom.  Since  I  must  put  these  remark 
able  beings  somewhere,  I  will  suppose  them 
to  be  in  Mars.  My  scientific  materialist 
might  decline  to  make  such  a  supposition, 
for  science  has,  apparently,  never  been  able 
to  colonize  Mars.  This  can  be  done  only 
by  imagination — which  has  done  it  with  an 
incredible  variety  of  colonists.  Therefore, 
I  may  put  a  few  colonists  there  on  my  own 
account. 

173 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

Now,  if  these  denizens  of  Mars  were  as 
much  superior  to  man  as  I  have  supposed 
them  to  be,  they  would,  of  course,  be  as  differ 
ent  from  man  as  he  is  different  from  a  mush 
room.  But  they  are  not  there,  or  if  they  are, 
we  do  not  know  it  and  cannot  find  it  out ;  so 
what  is  the  use  of  making  the  supposition  ? 

There  is  this  use  :  the  momentary  pres 
ence  in  Mars  of  these  strange  creatures  of 
my  imagination  has  enabled  me  to  make  a 
comparison  that  would  have  been  impossible 
without  their  help;  and  they  cannot  vanish 
from  their  Martial  abode  without,  at  least, 
leaving  the  planet  behind.  They  cannot 
take  it  away  with  them ;  and  what  shall  be 
said  of  a  being  so  colossal  in  its  proportions 
and  so  vast  in  its  complexity  that  the  whole 
planet  of  Mars  is  a  single  atom  in  its  body; 
and  Jupiter  and  the  Earth  and  the  other 
planets,  other  atoms ;  and  the  whole  solar 
system,  a  single  molecule;  and  our  whole 
sidereal  system  with  its  countless  constella 
tions,  a  single  cell ;  and  the  other  stellar 
174 


THE   SEARCH    FOR   SATISFACTION 

systems  that  can  be  reached  by  the  telescope, 
other  cells ;  not  to  mention  the  systems  and 
systems  of  systems  that  the  most  powerful 
telescope  never  has  reached  and  never  will 
reach,  the  existence  of  which  the  boldest 
astronomer  would  hesitate  to  deny  ? 

This  looks  no  more  like  a  man  than  a 
man  looks  like  a  mushroom,  but  who  can 
deny  that  it  —  the  whole  universe  —  is  an 
organism  ?  Who  can  deny  that  it  is  a  living 
organism  ?  Do  we  know  of  any  other  organ 
ism  in  which  the  signs  of  life  are  more  ap 
parent  ?  In  what  other  organism  are  the 
functions  performed  with  such  mathematical 
precision,  with  such  incredible  swiftness,  and 
on  so  sublime  a  scale  ?  Is  it  not  so  much 
more  perfectly  and  highly  organized  than 
man,  and  so  staggeringly  vast  in  its  propor 
tions  and  infinite  in  its  complexity,  that,  on 
our 'own  premises,  we  must  admit  that  its 
mentality  is  so  much  higher  than  man's  that 
the  difference  between  a  man  and  an  amoeba 
fades,  by  contrast,  into  equality  ? 
175 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

If  we  will  not  admit  it,  how  shall  we 
extricate  ourselves  from  the  logical  tangle 
into  which  we  have  fallen  ?  And  if  we  can 
not  extricate  ourselves,  how  can  we  show 
that  the  part  of  a  living  whole  is  dead  ?  How 
can  the  matter  of  a  living  universe  be  dead 
matter  ? 

Do  I  myself  believe  the  conclusion  at 
which  I  have  apparently  arrived  ?  (mused  the 
Lonely  Man).  Belief  is  a  large  word,  and  I 
would  certainly  have  no  one  put  to  torture 
for  not  believing  this  theory,  —  or  fancy,  if 
that  is  a  better  word,  —  but  it  seems  more 
plausible  each  time  my  thoughts  recur  to  it, 
and  it  seems,  on  the  one  hand,  to  be  invul 
nerable  to  the  assaults  of  the  materialist,  and 
on  the  other  hand,  it  does  not  seem  to  be 
irreverent.  How  can  the  materialist  deny 
that  mentality,  or  something  analogous  to  it, 
is  a  universal  attribute  of  organisms,  and  how 
can  it  be  more  irreverent  to  assume  that  the 
infinite  material  universe  is,  in  a  real  and 
logical  sense,  the  material  aspect  of  an  infinite 


THE   SEA:RCH   FOR   SATISFACTION 

divinity  than  it  is  to  make  the  same  assump 
tion  in  the  mystical  phraseology  of  theology 
as  we  now  do  ? 

If  the  philosopher  insists  that  that  through 
which  all  things  exist  is  unknowable,  he 
might  do  so  even  with  this  fancy  as  a  work 
ing  hypothesis  ;  for  who  knows,  or  can  know, 
the  universe  ?  But  those  philosophers  who 
have  most  nearly  exhausted  the  subtleties  of 
language  to  prove  that  the  Absolute  is  abso 
lutely  unknowable  have  invariably  ended  with 
either  a  tacit  or  an  open  admission  that  we 
do  actually  know  something  about  it.  There 
fore,  it  is  not  absolutely  unknowable,  and  it 
does  not  seem  presumptuous  to  say  that  the 
Unknowable  suggested  by  my  fancy  is  a  more 
natural,  tangible,  familiar  sort  of  Unknowable 
than  the  one  that  lurks  behind  the  fine-spun 
web  of  Mr.  MansePs  philosophy. 

But  the  important  question  is :  Could  I 
satisfy  my  heart  by  loving  such  a  divinity  ? 

I  could,  at  least,  satisfy  my  reason,  and  the 
satisfaction  of  reason  is  an  important  step 
177 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

toward  satisfying  the  heart.  It  would,  at  all 
events,  be  more  satisfactory  to  love  a  divinity 
that  has  some  natural,  credible  relationship 
to  man  than  one  that  is  wholly  beyond  and 
outside  the  infinite  natural  universe  to  which 
man  belongs.  If  the  love  of  a  natural  divin- 

D 

ity  would  not  satisfy  the  human  heart,  the 
descent  of  our  affection  from  such  a  being  to 
mankind  would  seem  more  rational  and  less 
violent  than  the  descent  from  an  impossible 
Deity  that  has  no  natural  or  logical  point  of 
contact  with  anything  so  mundane  as  man 
kind  ;  but  I  begin  to  perceive  that  neither 
the  love  of  the  mystical  Deity  which  theology 
offers  us  nor  the  love  of  the  Absolute  which 
is  offered  by  philosophy  can  satisfy  the  heart 
of  man. 

Man  must  love  something  on  his  own 
plane  of  being  —  something  of  which  he  can 
form  some  conception  and  with  which  he 
can  feel  some  sympathy.  If  my  fancy  points 
in  the  direction  of  the  truth,  the  love  of  man 
would  be,  in  a  real  sense,  the  love  of  a  frag- 
I78 


THE   SEARCH   FOR   SATISFACTION 

ment  of  the  universal  divinity  —  as  great  a 
fragment  as  the  infinitesimal  capacity  of  man 
would  enable  him  to  bring  within  the  radius 
of  his  most  expanded  love,  and  several  million 
times  greater  than  that  which  he  actually 
does  love  in  any  true  sense.  For  how  can 
we  delude  ourselves  into  believing  that  that 
is  love  for  which  a  brother  or  a  sister,  a 
husband  or  a  wife,  would  not  care  a  rap  ? 
And  what  brother  or  sister  or  husband  or 
wife  would  care  a  rap  for  a  love  whose  chief 
expression  is  hostile  competition  ?  The  ques 
tion  is  not  whether  hostile  competition  is 
right  or  necessary,  but  whether  it  reveals  and 
begets  love ;  and  I  submit  that  it  does  not. 

Do  we  say  that  man  as  he  is,  is  so  unlovely 
that  we  cannot  love  him,  and  that  we  must, 
therefore,  idealize  and  magnify  his  best  traits, 
and  then  love  the  resulting  magnified  ideali 
zation  as  a  god  ?  That  is,  perhaps,  what  the 
best  of  us  unconsciously  do  in  the  name  of 
religion  ;  but  it  is,  on  the  one  hand,  irrever 
ent,  for  this  idealization  is  not  God,  and  it 
179 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

is,  on  the  other  hand,  irrational,  and  leads 
swiftly  to  a  mysticism  that  leaves  us  nothing 
to  love  but  a  bundle  of  verbal  subtleties  and 
contradictions,  out  of  which  the  most  astute 
philosopher  can  liberate  no  meaning,  and  the 
most  earnest  theologian  no  warmth.  This 
can  never  satisfy  the  human  heart,  and  this, 
I  fear,  is  the  bulk  of  what  religion  gives  us 
on  this  side  of  the  grave. 

Does  it  offer  more  ?  Aye ;  but  has  it 
given  more  ?  If  it  has  taught  man  really  to 
love  his  fellow-man,  how  has  he  so  thoroughly 
unlearned  the  lesson  that  he  now  regards  his 
fellow-man  his  legitimate  prey,  and  fears  him 
as  his  worst  enemy,  except  in  the  presence 
of  a  police  force  or  in  the  shadow  of  an  army  ? 
And  why  is  it  that  those  armies  which  are 
most  efficient  in  butchery  are  those  which 
have  originated  where  the  noblest  existing 
religion  has  been  longest  taught  ? 

Religion  cannot  be  destroyed  till  the  uni 
verse  has  been  destroyed  and  the  divinity  of 
the  universe  has  ceased  to  reveal  itself  through 
180 


THE   SEARCH   FOR   SATISFACTION 

the  genius  of  man,  whether  it  be  the  genius 
of  a  Hebrew  prophet  or  of  an  English  poet  j 
but  it  cannot  satisfy  human  hearts  till  its 
truths  have  been  in  some  measure  stripped 
of  their  gauzy  mysticism  and  brought  to 
earth.  So  concrete  a  thing  as  a  human  heart 
must  love  a  thing  of  flesh  and  blood,  and  if 
we  cannot  love  man  as  he  is,  and  must  per 
force  idealize,  why  may  we  not  idealize  the 
imperfections  out  of  the  humanity  that  is,  and 
then  love  that,  rather  than  idealize  perfec 
tions  into  a  humanity  that  is  not,  and  then 
try  to  love  that  ?  The  real  side  of  human 
ity  might  be  improved  by  the  process,  and 
the  ideal  side  would  not  have  the  monopoly 
of  our  affection  which  it  now  appears  to 
have. 

This  seems  to  be  the  goal  toward  which 
religion,  science,  philosophy,  and  politics  are 
slowly  groping,  and  in  some  thousands  of 
years  the  goal  may  be  reached,  but  it  is  con 
ceivable  that  with  our  voluntary  aid  it  might 
be  reached  some  thousands  of  years  sooner. 
181 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

When  it  shall  have  been  reached,  the  heart 
of  man  may  be  satisfied. 

If  we  passively  wait  for  the  realization  of 
this  dream  we  shall  wait  long,  and  neither  the 
struggle  for  bread  nor  the  scramble  for  gold 
nor  the  murmuring  of  prayers  wilL  greatly 
alleviate  the  dreariness  of  waiting.  But  let 
us  not  be  disheartened  :  let  us  not  too  hastily 
decide  that  there  is  nothing  that  can  in  any 
degree  satisfy  the  heart  while  we  wait.  There 
are  more  things  than  banks  and  churches  in 

O 

the  world  :  there  is  the  justice  of  the  peace, 
forsooth,  and  he  can  marry  us. 

Here  is  the  promise  of  a  joy  so  sweet  that 
one's  whole  being  thrills  with  pleasure  at  the 
thought  of  it.  This  promise  comes  when 
fortune  favors  us,  and  gives  a  rich  intensity 
to  all  our  other  joys.  It  comes  in  times 
of  gloom  and  sadness  and  gently  mitigates 
our  sorrow.  It  hovers  on  the  outskirts  of  our 
consciousness  in  loneliness  and  redeems  our 
moods  from  utter  dulness.  It  bids  us  per 
severe  when  constant  disappointment  attends 
182 


THE   SEARCH   FOR   SATISFACTION 

our  efforts  to  win  wealth  or  fame.  It  cheers 
us  when  the  bubble  bursts  within  our  hands 
after  we  have  won  it,  and  makes  us  try  again. 
It  comes  when  grim  despair  has  bidden  us  to 
curse  the  world  and  die,  and  stays  our  hand 
and  lures  us  on  to  meet  defeat  again. 

I  know  not  what  joy  the  hope  of  being 
loved  by  one  man  brings  to  a  woman's  heart, 
for  my  ignorance  of  her  heart  is  boundless ; 
but  the  hope  of  being  loved,  or  the  belief 
that  one  is  loved,  by  some  fair  woman,  is  the 
thing  that  gives  the  gladness  to  all  the  men 
that  have  glad  hearts.  This  sweet,  seductive 
hope  is  that  which  lies  beneath  the  tragedy  — 
or  comedy  —  of  life,  and  gives  a  man  the 
courage  to  play  his  part  in  it.  It  is  this  that 
sends  him  out  to  war  against  his  fellows  and 
beguiles  him  into  church  to  pray ;  it  is  this 
that  makes  the  world  seem,  in  spite  of  all  the 
savage  cruelty  there  is  within  it,  a  delightful 
place ;  it  is  this  that  makes  life  seem,  in 
spite  of  all  its  vapid  emptiness,  a  glorious 
thing.  A  man  may  scoff  bravely  at  the  love 

183 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

of  woman,  but  in  his  secret  soul  he  knows 
this  is  the  main  thing  in  his  life. 

So,  then,  let  us  not  become  despondent. 
We  have  the  promise  of  this  love.  Our 
instinct  plants  the  promise  in  our  hearts  and 
will  never  let  it  die.  We  feel  it  tingling  in 
our  veins  in  early  youth ;  we  feel  it  straining 
at  our  wills  in  later  years  to  swerve  us  from 
the  course  of  life  we  have  mapped  out ;  we 
feel  it  leaping  in  our  hearts  when  our  super 
human  efforts  to  achieve  a  dear  success  have 
brought  the  prize  within  our  reach ;  we  see  it 
in  the  amorous  glance  of  half-veiled  eyes  and 
in  the  modest  blushes  of  coy  cheeks;  it 
whispers  to  us  in  the  rustle  of  a  silken  skirt ; 
it  is  this  that  murmurs  softly  to  us  in  the 
dreamy  measures  of  a  waltz,  —  this  promise 
of  a  woman's  love. 

So  let  us  scoff  at  the  universal  love  of 
human  beings  for  all  their  fellow-beings. 
Let  us  call  it  a  sweet,  Utopian  dream  that 
will  never  be  fulfilled,  and  let  us  do  nothing 
to  hasten  its  advent.  Let  us  love,  of  course, 
184 


THE   SEARCH   FOR   SATISFACTION 

but  let  us  fix  our  hot  affection  on  one  fellow- 
being  of  the  other  sex  and  put  our  knife  to 
the  throats  of  other  fellow-beings  to  make 
that  one  happy.  Though  we  may  not  make 
a  flower  garden  of  the  world,  we  may  have 
a  little  garden  of  our  own  with  one  sweet 
rose  in  it  —  and  a  barbed-wire  fence  around 
it.  And  if  we  fear  the  thorns  that  often  lurk 
beneath  the  petals  of  the  rose,  and  therefore 
never  have  a  garden  of  our  own,  we  may  lean 
upon  our  neighbor's  barbed-wire  fence  and 
inhale  the  fragrance  of  his  rose.  The  roses 
seem  to  like  it ;  but  let  us  not  forget  that 
barbs  are  often  quite  as  sharp  as  thorns. 

So  do  not  worry  about  the  love  of  humanity 
in  general.  Claim  the  sweet  fulfilment  of 
the  promise  which  instinct  gives  you,  and 
love  a  woman.  Do  not  think  the  promise  is 
a  mere  enticing  mockery.  What  does  it 
matter  that  the  pretty  schoolmate  who,  in 
the  distant  past,  blushingly  confessed  her  love 
to  you  behind  the  lilac  bush,  and  passed  the 
touching  little  messages  of  love  to  you  be- 

185 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

tween  the  pages  of  her  spelling  book,  and 
sobbed  out  her  assurances  of  eternal  constancy 
to  you  when  at  last  you  went  out  into  the 
world  to  seek  your  fortune,  —  was  married 
to  another  wretch  within  a  year  ?  She  was 
a  girl.  Love  a  woman. 

You  saw,  yourself,  that  it  really  did  not 
matter,  after  you  had  met  the  sister  of  your 
friend's  wife.  When  you  fell  under  the  spell 
of  her  brown  eyes  and  black  hair  and  slender 
figure,  you  perceived  that  you  had  never 
really  loved  before.  Her  silvery  voice  gave 
utterance  to  the  first  real  melody  in  a  woman's 
soul  that  you  had  ever  heard.  Were  you 
not  thankful  then  that  you  had  escaped  the 
simple  little  schoolmate  ?  This  was  no  sen 
timental  little  rustic ;  this  was  a  splendid 
woman  who  had  had  the  constant,  watchful 
care  of  fond  parents,  the  accomplishments 
which  wealth  alone  can  give  one,  and  was 
worthy  of  a  prince's  love.  She  heard  love's 
message  for  the  first  time  when  she  heard  it 
from  your  lips.  Her  glad  surprise  showed 
186 


THE   SEARCH   FOR   SATISFACTION 

you  how  new  the  message  was  and  how 
sweet.  There  was  no  feigning  here.  The 
joy  that  glistened  in  her  averted  eyes  was 
the  real  joy  that  cannot  be  counterfeited.  It 
was  the  kind  of  joy  that  tingles  through  a 
woman's  nerves,  and  quivers  in  her  breath, 
and  sets  its  blushing  stamp  upon  her  face  and 
neck  before  the  quickest  tongue  can  frame 
a  sentence.  It  was  the  kind  of  joy  that  has 
Nature's  guarantee  of  genuineness,  and  makes 
a  sudden  paradise  of  the  world  and  a  poem 
of  two  lives.  Even  after  all  these  years  you 
will  admit  that  this  woman  loved  you  —  then, 
and  for  one  blissful  month  thereafter. 

At  first,  when  things  began  to  change,  the 
explanations  of  her  absence  when  she  ex 
pected  you  seemed  plausible.  There  was 
the  sudden  call  to  a  sick  grandmother,  —  she 
was  her  grandmother's  favorite.  There  was 
her  unexpected  delay  with  her  sister  at  the 
missionary  society,  —  her  sister  really  was 
away  that  evening.  There  was  another  un 
expected  delay  with  her  sister's  husband, 
187 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

—  and  then  unlucky  chance  disclosed  the 
fact  that  her  sister's  husband  had  spent  that 
evening  at  his  office,  while  your  sweetheart 
spent  the  evening  in  the  park  with  some  one 
else;  and  then  your  fond  heart  grew  suspi 
cious.  A  rival  whom  you  did  not  know  had 
come  along  and  reaped  the  harvest  you  had 
sown.  The  lips  that  you  had  taught  to  kiss 
kissed  his.  The  soul  in  which  you  wakened 
into  life  the  symphony  of  love  now  played 
this  symphony  in  his.  The  breast  that  you 
had  taught  to  throb  with  love  now  throbbed 
with  love  on  his. 

But  do  not,  I  pray  you,  grow  despondent. 
This  woman  had  been  too  long  shielded  from 
temptation,  and  when  temptation  came  she 
yielded.  Who  was  it  that  said,  "  The  vir 
tue  that  requires  a  constant  guard  is  hardly 
worth  the  sentinel  "  ?  He  told  the  truth. 
Go,  seek  out  a  woman  who  has  been  thrown, 
without  a  chaperon,  into  the  fiery  furnace  of 
temptation  which  we  call  the  world,  and  yet 
has  stood  the  test.  You  will  think  you  find 

i  as 


THE   SEARCH   FOR   SATISFACTION 

her,  and  whether  her  eyes  are  of  one  color  or 
another,  whether  the  fair  possessor  is  plump 
and  jolly  or  slender  and  grave,  whether  she 
still  has  the  beauty  of  ripe  maturity  to  win  or 
is  already  regretting  the  loss  of  her  ancient 
prettiness, — the  symphony  which  she  will 
play  in  your  soul  and  the  poetry  which  she 
will  write  in  your  life  will  be  the  same,  if  the 
fair  creature  can  awaken  them  at  all ;  and  in 
some  cases  she  will  play  the  same  symphony 
with  only  a  faint  discord  here  and  there,  and 
inject  the  same  poetry  into  the  world  all 
through  one's  life,  till  the  gray  hairs  come 
and  the  eyes  grow  dim  and  one  totters  into 
one's  grave  with  the  pleasing  conviction  that 
it  has  been  a  good  thing  to  live. 

If  she  can  do  this  for  you,  what  matters 
it  that  she  may  have  done  it  for  a  dozen 
others  ?  Sly  dogs  who  think  they  know  the 
world  will  tell  you  that  she  has,  and  that  you 
are  a  fool  to  love  her;  but,  mark  you,  you 
are  no  greater  fool  than  they  will  be  if  they 
ever  fall  in  love.  He  who  has  never  known 
189 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

the  bliss  of  being  a  fool  has  never  been  in 
love.  I  have  been,  but  though  I  am  not 
so  great  a  fool  as  he  who  seeks  to  regulate 
the  conduct  of  other  fools  in  love,  I  may 
advise  you  to  let  sleeping  dogs  lie.  Where 
you  have  no  suspicions  let  no  other  man 
awaken  them.  Remember  that  if  it  is  ever 
true  that  "  nothing  is  but  thinking  makes 
it  so,"  it  is  true  in  love  ;  and  remember  that 
though  a  woman  were  as  chaste  as  Diana  she 
could  not  prove  her  virtue. 

There  are  some  cynics  who  tell  us  that  the 
love  between  a  man  and  a  woman  never 
lasts,  but  this  is  false.  Sometimes  the  pretty 
dream  is  dreamed  out  to  the  end  without  a 
nightmare :  the  poetry  runs  smoothly  on 
through  an  enchanted  world;  the  symphony 
plays  sweetly  on  in  an  enchanted  heart  till 
the  end  of  life  is  reached.  I  know,  for  I 
have  seen ;  but,  alas,  I  have  not  seen  this 
very  often.  Oftener  have  I  had  reason  to 
suspect  that  the  symphony  had  died  out,  and 
the  heart-strings  had  become  covered  with 
190 


THE   SEARCH   FOR   SATISFACTION 

dust  or  were  being  clandestinely  played  by  an 
unseen  and  forbidden  hand. 

So,  when  one  feels  that  one  is  coming 
under  the  influence  that  has  power  to  awaken 
this  music  in  the  soul  and  write  this  poetry 
in  the  world,  how  shall  one  know  that  this  is 
the  kind  of  music  that  will  last  ?  How  shall 
one  know  that  the  player  will  not  lose  her 
cunning  or  the  instrument  its  tone  ?  The 
first  strains  are  indistinguishable  from  the 
kind  that  does  last  —  and  from  the  kind  that 
does  not.  Shall  we  say  that  the  love  that 
dies  was  never  love  ?  Ah,  we  do  not  say  it 
till  it  dies.  We  thought  it  was  love,  till  its 
decay  convinced  us  that  it  was  not.  It  is  a 
timid  diagnostician  who  never  makes  a  diag 
nosis  except  at  an  autopsy.  Then,  some 
times,  when  a  surfeited  heart  has  had  a  long 
rest  or  a  change  of  surroundings,  the  old  love 
comes  to  life  again  and  we  change  our  minds 
again  and  say  it  was  love  after  all.  Here  is 
a  mystery ;  a  mystery  which,  it  is  true,  may 
often  be  solved  by  showing  that  the  decay  of 
191 


REFLECTIONS    OF   A    LONELY    MAN 

love  was  due  to  some  one's  stupid  selfishness, 
but  often  it  cannot  be  solved  at  all.  We 
must  put  it  back  upon  the  mental  shelf  on 
which  we  keep  the  other  mysteries  that  have 
to  do  with  woman. 

There  are  many  of  these  mysteries.  Her 
intellect  is  one  of  them.  That  she  has  an 
intellect  there  is  no  longer  any  doubt,  but 
there  is  still  some  difference  of  opinion  as  to 
the  relative  capability  of  her  intellect  and 
that  of  her  brother.  Whatever  the  solution 
of  this  question  may  be,  woman's  intellect  is 
different  from  man's.  At  least,  it  has  seemed 
so  to  me.  When  I  have  told  her  that  I  have 
had  four  great-grandfathers,  she  has  almost 
always  asked  me  if  my  mother  married  twice. 
When  ,1  have  assured  her  that  there  have 
been  no  second  marriages  among  my  ances 
tors  so  far  as  history  records  their  misdeeds, 
she  has  looked  upon  me  with  suspicion  as  an 
eccentric  person  who  has  chosen  a  needlessly 
complicated  method  of  getting  into  the  world 
and  may  cause  trouble  before  getting  out  of 
192 


THE   SEARCH   FOR   SATISFACTION 

it.  When  I  have  told  her  at  noon  on  Mon 
day  that  in  ten  days  I  should  leave  town,  she 
has  invariably  counted  the  days  on  her  fingers 
and  decided  that  I  should  go  at  noon  on 
Wednesday  of  the  next  week.  When  I 
have,  in  the  deep  humiliation  resulting  from 
her  apparently  needless  haste  to  get  rid  of 
me,  assured  her  that  I  had  not  intended  to 
go  till  Thursday,  she  has  counted  her  pretty 
fingers  again,  saying,  "  To-day  is  one  day," 
and  found  again  that  she  had  exactly  fingers 
(and  thumbs)  enough  to  reach  to  noon  on 
the  second  following  Wednesday.  In  these 
intellectual  encounters  I  have  invariably  been 
compelled  to  retire  with  a  badly  damaged 
reputation  for  arithmetical  acumen. 

Then  when  I  have  asked  her  how  old  I 
was  when  I  was  half  as  old  as  my  brother, 
if,  ten  years  later,  my  age  was  two-thirds  of 
his,  she  has  innocently  asked  me  how  old  my 
brother  was  at  that  time.  When  I  have 
told  her  that  boys  and  girls  in  short  nether 
garments  are  solving  such  problems  as  that 
13  193 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

in  the  schools  without  knowing  how  old  the 
brother  was,  she  has  faintly  remembered 
something  of  the  sort  in  her  own  school  ex 
perience,  but  has  said  that  she  never  did  like 
puzzles  and  does  not  consider  them  practical. 
She  may  even  have  intimated  that  age  is 
rather  too  delicate  a  subject  to  discuss  with 
a  lady,  anyhow. 

Now,  in  the  mind  of  a  fairly  intelligent 
man  the  statement  of  the  problem  immedi 
ately  resolves  itself  into 

X  +    10  =  |  (2X  +    10), 

whence,  by  the  swift  compulsion  of  inexora 
ble  logic,  without  any  aid  from  teachers  or 
any  guidance  from  books,  the  male  mind  is 
forced  to  the  conclusion  that  this  important 
period  in  my  life  was  a  good  while  ago ; 
namely,  when  I  was  exactly  ten  years  old. 

The  educated  male  mind  can  work  with 
swift  precision  in  a  groove  of  logic  which 
leads  by  only  one  possible  route  to  only  one 
possible  conclusion.  It  may  ascend  into 
previously  unexplored  regions,  but  it  must  be 
194 


THE   SEARCH    FOR   SATISFACTION 

pushed  by  logic  up  the  syllogistic  stairway 
from  one  premise  to  the  next.  Where  a 
step  is  out  or  where  there  is  a  parting  of  the 
ways,  it  is  more  likely  to  go  wrong  than  not. 
It  must  have  the  compulsion  of  necessity  or 
the  guidance  of  extreme  probability  or  it  will 
go  wrong. 

Now,  compulsion  is  exactly  what  my 
sister's  intellect  does  not  like.  Give  her  a 
problem  to  the  solution  of  which  there  is  no 
clearly  defined  road  —  a  problem  to  which 
there  are  seven  thousand  possible  answers 
only  one  of  which  can  be  correct,  and  her 
agile  mind  will  balance  itself  for  its  flight 
into  the  unknown,  as  a  meadow  lark  on  the 
fence  that  separates  the  beaten  road  from  the 
trackless  meadow  balances  itself  first  on  one 
foot  and  then  on  the  other,  and  sings  out  to 
you,  u  My  nest  is  in  the  meadow.  You  can 
not  see  it,  but  do  you  think  I  cannot  find  it  ? 
The  grass  is  tall,  and  there  are  no  pathways 
through  the  air,  but  am  I  not  a  meadow 
lark  ?  "  Then,  after  performing  a  few  gyra- 
195 


REFLECTIONS    OF   A    LONELY    MAN 

tions  before  your  bewildered  eyes  and  turning 
back  to  laugh  at  your  dulness,  it  sweeps 
with  unerring  precision  to  its  nest. 

While  woman's  intellect  does  not  abso 
lutely  refuse  to  work  in  the  logical  groove,  it 
has  seemed  to  me  that  it  dislikes  to  do  so,  pre 
ferring  to  solve  those  problems  which  must 
be  solved  as  the  meadow  lark  finds  its  nest ; 
and  with  her  newly  liberated  intellect  she  has 
solved  full  many  a  problem  in  the  unmapped 
realms  of  thought  while  the  clumsy  intellect 
of  man  has  been  looking  around  for  a  path. 

Some  of  the  sweetest  and  truest  poetry  that 
has  ever  been  written  has,  according  to  my  dull 
judgment,  been  written  by  a  woman  whose 
name  I  will  not  even  think,  lest  I  suspect 
myself  of  indulging  in  fulsome  flattery,  which 
I  never  do.  When  we  see  these  truths  in 
their  beautiful  habiliments  of  words  we  can 
see  that  they  are  true,  but  we  could  never 
have  found  them  ourselves. 

But  are  we  always  certain  when  this  in 
tellect  of  our  fair  sister  swoops  from  the 
196 


THE   SEARCH   FOR   SATISFACTION 

dizzy  heights  which  we  cannot  attain,  into  a 
bewildering  maze  of  thought  whither  we 
cannot  follow,  that  it  always  really  goes  any 
where  or  finds  anything  when  it  gets  there  ? 
I  have  read  books  (the  names  of  which  it  is 
needless  to  think)  which,  to  me,  were  as 
hopelessly  incoherent  and  senseless  as  the 
jabbering  of  a  man  who  is  recovering  from 
the  effects  of  ether;  while  to  many  a  woman 
whom  I  have  known  there  was  in  each  mys 
tical  sentence  in  these  books  a  perfectly  lucid 
meaning.  It  is  comforting  to  know  that  to 
some  of  my  sisters  the  apostles  of  mysticism 
are  as  incomprehensible  as  they  are  to  me; 
but  it  is  discouraging  to  know  that  to  some 
of  my  brothers  —  actual  men  with  whiskers 
—  such  writers  are  as  intelligible  as  they  are 
to  my  specially  initiated  sisters. 

I  have  sought  out  my  sister  —  the  one 
who  understands  occult  things  —  and  humbly 
craved  her  assistance  in  my  effort  to  under 
stand  them.  She  has  tried  to  reduce  the 
subtle  meanings  of  her  favorite  authors  to 
197 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

language  of  a  simplicity  commensurate  with 
that  of  the  coarse  machinery  of  my  dull  brain, 
but  she  has  failed.  I  have  at  times  been  in 
spired  with  the  hope  that  I  should  presently 
understand,  but  just  as  my  exhausted  intellect 
has  trembled  on  the  threshold  of  the  occult 
world  to  which  she  would  fain  have  intro 
duced  me,  I  have  suddenly  become  conscious 
of —  nothing  but  the  figures  on  the  carpet 
and  the  pictures  on  the  wall  and  the  other 
familiar  things  in  the  prosaic  world  in  which 
I  live. 

Did  I  say  prosaic  world  ?  It  will  never 
be  a  prosaic  world  to  me,  my  dear  sister,  so 
long  as  you  are  in  it.  It  may  be  that  mys 
tery  is  an  intellectual  necessity  to  man,  but 
shall  I  despair  of  finding  this  mystery  because 
the  occultism  of  the  Orient  is  a  closed  book 
to  me,  because  I  cannot  read  Hegel  after  he 
tells  me  that  being  and  not  being  are  the 
same,  because  absent  treatment  has  no  effect 
on  me,  and  because  the  rites  of  my  secret  so 
ciety  are  cheap  humbugs  which  any  school- 
198 


THE   SEARCH    FOR   SATISFACTION 

boy  could  see  through  ?  Shall  I  despair  of 
finding  mystery  because  all  through  the  allur 
ing  realm  of  modern  geometry — in  which 
parallel  lines  meet  at  infinity  or  anywhere 
else  one  chooses  to  make  them  meet,  in 
which  the  three  angles  of  a  triangle  may  be 
either  greater  or  less  than  two  right  angles, 
in  which  space  may  be  round  or  oval  or  of 
the  shape  of  a  saddle  and  have  as  many  di 
mensions  as  one  pleases  to  give  it  —  my  im 
agination,  as  it  struggles  to  follow  Riemann 
and  Helmholtz,  is  pursued  by  the  dull  con 
viction  that  an  axiom  does  not  require  a 
proof  and  that  Euclid's  twelfth  axiom  is  cor 
rect  whether  it  can  be  proved  or  not  ? 

No,  I  shall  not  despair,  for  so  long  as 
woman  is  in  the  world  there  will  be  a  mys 
tery  great  enough  for  me,  a  real  mystery 
which  lures  my  baffled  understanding  to  re 
newed  attempts  at  its  solution  after  each 
defeat.  I  have  studied  this  mystery  in  the 
dull  routine  of  daily  life ;  I  have  studied  it 
in  the  gayety  of  the  ballroom ;  I  have  studied 
199 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

it  in  the  sacred  presence  of  the  other  mystery 
of  birth;  I  have  studied  it  in  the  solemn 
presence  of  the  final  mystery  of  death.  It 
has  mocked  me  from  the  depths  of  laugh 
ing  eyes ;  it  has  frowned  at  me  from  eyes 
that  never  laugh  ;  it  has  leered  at  me  from 
painted  faces  in  the  street  at  night  when 
no  policeman  was  in  sight;  and  once  in 
such  a  face  I  thought  it  had  almost  revealed 
itself. 

Something  in  that  face  seemed  to  say, 
"  The  honored  wife  upon  the  boulevard  and 
I  are  sisters.  We  wear  man's  yoke  —  I  for 
an  hour,  she  for  life ;  and  neither  of  us 
loves  him.  Our  vanity  must  first  be  grati 
fied,  and  then  we  must  be  fed.  My  sister 
in  the  office  and  the  marts  of  trade  has  cast 
aside  man's  yoke  and  donned  his  armor,  and 
now  she  hates  him  while  she  fights  him. 
What  would  you  have,  fool  ?  Do  you  ex 
pect  to  find  love  in  the  brothel  or  the  home, 
when  there  is  none  in  the  world  ?  The 
world  is  made  of  homes  and  brothels.  How 
200 


THE   SEARCH   FOR   SATISFACTION 

can  there  be  more  in  the  parts  than  in  the 
whole?  We  must  be  fed.  Ha,  ha!  We 
must  be  fed." 

How  much  of  truth  there  was  in  what 
that  painted  face  revealed  I  do  not  know. 
I  cannot  think  it  was  the  whole  truth.  I 
have  seen  homes  in  which  the  love  was  real 
and  undisguised,  and  sometimes  my  fancy 
paints  a  world  in  which  it  might  be  so  in 
every  case,  but  it  is  not  the  world  I  find 
about  me ;  and  so,  to-night,  I  do  not  know 
how  much  of  satisfaction  the  heart  of  man 
may  find  in  woman's  love. 

And  the  heart  of  woman  ?  How  shall  it 
be  satisfied  ?  Ah,  her  heart  is  the  most  in 
scrutable  part  of  the  whole  enigma.  I  am 
not  certain  that,  in  this  present  world,  it  can 
be  satisfied  at  all. 

Of  late  years  she  has  got  into  the  habit 
of  thinking,  or  appearing  to  think,  that  the 
scramble  at  the  pie  counter  is  the  most  satis 
fying  thing  in  life,  and  you  will  find  her 
there  in  numbers  that  are  continually  increas- 
201 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

ing.  You  will  find  her  competing  as  merrily 
with  her  brothers  as  they  compete  with  each 
other.  You  will  find  the  struggle  none  the 
less  fierce  because  of  her  presence.  You  will 
find  her  paying  the  same  price  in  work  for  a 
smaller  piece  of  pie  than  her  brother  is  will 
ing  to  take.  You  will  find  her  clamoring 
for  more  places  at  the  world's  pie  counter, 
and  you  will  find  her  getting  them.  You 
will  find  barriers  going  down,  under  protest 
at  first  and  without  protest  at  last,  for  the 
struggle  for  pie  presently  leaves  no  breath  for 
protest. 

Everywhere  gentle  woman,  who  was  once 
the  subject  of  painters,  the  theme  of  poets, 
the  mother  of  children,  the  inspiration  of 
men,  —  who  was  once  the  one  lovely  feature 
of  a  world  otherwise  brutalized  by  the  strug 
gle  of  man  against  man,  —  is  elbowing  her 
way  into  the  struggling  crowd,  still  further  to 
intensify  and  embitter  the  strife  and  make 
this  loveless  world  less  lovely  than  it  was 
before. 

202 


THE   SEARCH   FOR   SATISFACTION 

It  may  be  that  this  is  the  final  act  in  a 
tragedy  of  the  race.  God  forbid  that  the 
curtain  should  ever  go  up  on  anything  worse. 
It  may  be  that  this  is  the  means  whereby 
Nature  will  finally  jolt  the  dull  faculties  of 
man  into  some  realization  of  the  essential 
brutality  of  the  whole  ghastly  system  of  hos 
tile  competition.  For  if  we  shall  know  the 
millennium  by  the  token  of  love,  by  that 
token  we  know  that  it  does  not  lie  in  the 
direction  of  such  competition. 

Has  such  competition  been  the  means  by 
which  organic  life  has  reached  its  present 
high  plane  in  man  ?  Has  this  murderous 
struggle  for  existence  brought  about  that  nat 
ural  selection  whereby  man  has  been  evolved 
from  the  lowest  living  organisms  ? 

I  grant  that  it  has,  but  when  I  look  back 
over  the  devastated  pathway  by  which  man 
has  reached  his  present  high  plane  of  being, 
I  stand  aghast  at  the  spilled  blood  and  broken 
skulls  that  strew  the  way.  I  am  appalled  at 
the  countless  billions  that  have  gone  down  in 
203 


REFLECTION'S   OF   A    LONELY    MAN 


that  ^n^fcj  and  I  am  inclined  to  think 
that  the  bloody  price  of  progress  has  now 
been  fully  paid. 

Must  the  fittest  to  survive  be  for  ever  the 
one  that  has  the  sharpest  tooth  and  strongest 
jaw?  Shall  fitness  to  survive  be  for  ever 
nMiinrod  by  the  yardstick  of  sclithiKv*?  ? 

It  may  be  true  among  brutes  tint  selfish 
ness  is  the  chief  condition  that  determines 
progress;  but  man  has  unugud  from  the 
state  of  the  beast,  and  has  a  lofty  intellect 
by  means  of  which  he  measures  worlds  and 
compares  infinkirs.  This  intellect,  being  a 
product  of  Nature,  is  a  part  of  Nature,  and 
shall  it  not  enter  into  the  conditions  of  nat 
ural  selection  and  so  modify  that  process  that 
fitness  to  survive  may  heicjfier  be  measured 
in  units  of  usefulness  instead  of  units  of  self- 
i^h-ess  : 

I  think  it  may,  for  it  is  unbelievable  that 

superiority  of  skill  in   the  practice  of  selfish 

ness  it  the  only  kind  of  superiority  that  will 

ever  inmic  survival  ;  and  yet  I  know  that,  in 

204 


THE   SEARCH   FOR   SATISFACTION 

the  past,  the  loftiest  superiority  of  other  kinds 
has  paid  the  price  of  death  for  the  privilege 
of  advancing  the  race. 

But  selfishness,  as  a  factor  in  evolution,  is 
progressing  swiftly  to  its  limit,  if,  indeed,  it 
has  not  already  begun  its  own  destruction. 
When  selfishness  raises  the  hand  of  savage 
against  savage  and  the  fang  of  beast  against 
beast,  it  may  cause  the  crudest  hand  and  the 
most  venomous  tooth  to  survive  and  propa 
gate  its  kind;  but  when  selfishness  squats 
like  an  imp  on  the  throne  on  which  Cupid 
once  reigned,  the  end  is  in  sight.  The  self 
ishness  which  embitters  woman  against  man, 
and  man  against  woman,  cannot  propagate 
its  kind  save  by  example.  It  cannot  beget 
its  kind  in  flesh  and  blood. 

The  competitive  warfare  that  has  raised 
man  to  his  present  high  plane  has  grown  so 
familiar  that  he  thinks  it  is  needful  and 
always  will  be.  It  has  sharpened  men's  wits 
and  brought  forth  great  inventions ;  it  has 
built  up  great  fortunes  and  cities ;  it  has 

20s 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

circled  the  globe  with  copper  and  steel  ;  it 
has  heated  and  lighted  our  houses  with  steam 
and  electricity ;  it  has  brought  to  our  break 
fast  tables  the  news  of  what  has  been  done 
in  the  world  overnight. 

Will  it  enable  us  to  amass  still  greater 
fortunes,  and  build  still  greater  (and  dirtier) 
cities,  and  talk  still  further  over  a  wire  or 
across  oceans  without  any  wire,  and  travel  in 
still  greater  luxury  to  Hongkong  or  Peking? 
Will  it  make  our  newspapers  still  greater 
and  more  widely  read,  and  our  books  better 
bound,  and  our  bread  better  baked,  and  our 
beer  better  brewed  ? 

Aye,  it  will ;  and  so  would  a  kind  of  com 
petition  that  would  impel  us  primarily  to  seek 
the  advancement  of  the  race,  and  seek  our 
own  advancement  only  so  far  as  we  can 
advance  without  injury  to  our  fellows.  But 
if  we  continue  to  advance  by  the  hostile 
method,  what  shall  we  presently  be  able  to 
buy  with  our  fortunes  that  we  shall  care  to 
have  ?  What  shall  we  be  able  to  say  over  a 
206 


THE   SEARCH    FOR   SATISFACTION 

telephone  wire  that  will  make  us  or  any  one 
else  any  better  or  happier  ?  What  shall  we 
do  in  Hongkong  or  Peking  when  we  get 
there  that  would  not  better  be  left  undone  ? 
Who  will  care  to  season  his  breakfast  with  the 
news  of  the  night  when  he  must  tremblingly 
read  the  whole  paper  to  see  if  his  own  name 
has  been  blasted  at  last,  or  worse  blasted  than 
it  was  before  ?  Who  will  care  to  read  edi 
torials,  however  learned,  when  one  knows  that 
the  writer  would  have  written  the  opposite 
for  one  cent  more  a  yard,  and  would  to 
morrow  for  one  cent  less  if  he  should  lose 
his  present  job  ?  Who  will  care  for  better 
bound  books,  when  the  world  grows  so  selfish 
that  a  book  with  a  truth  in  it  could  not  be 
sold  ?  Who  will  care  for  better  baked  bread 
or  better  brewed  beer,  when  one  knows  the 
whole  world  could  see  one  choke  on  one's 
bread  or  one's  beer  and  not  care  a  rap  ? 

Inventions  may  facilitate  useful  endeavor, 
but   they  do    not   compel   it;    and   the   only 
thing  that  can  compel  it  is  something  in  the 
207 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

heart  which  hostile  competition  will  never 
put  there,  though  it  build  railroads  from  Cape 
Town  to  New  Zealand,  or  air  ships  that  will 
travel  from  New  York  to  Mars. 

Then,  when  woman  puts  on  her  armor  to 
take  part  in  the  strife  that  builds  fortunes  and 
employs  all  sorts  of  inventions,  is  she  sure  she 
is  helping  the  race  toward  its  goal  ?  Is  she 
sure  that  the  masculine  methods  which  she 
seems  proud  to  practise  have  not  ceased  to 
be  fit  to  be  practised,  even  by  men  ? 

And  yet  I  would  not  chide  her.  At  least, 
I  would  not  chide  her  sex  alone  for  the  co 
lossal  selfishness  that  holds  both  sexes  in  its 
grasp.  It  forces  her  into  her  present  life. 
It  rules  the  world ;  the  world  whose  gold 
does  not  enrich  it,  whose  prayers  do  not 
sanctify  it ;  the  world  in  which  the  justice 
of  the  peace  too  often  fails  to  make  us  happy 
when  he  marries  us;  for  truly,  there  are 
more  things  than  banks  and  churches  in  this 
world :  there  is  also  the  divorce  court. 


208 


THE   RELEASE    FROM    PAIN 

AS  the  Lonely  Man  still  sits  musing  be 
fore  his  fire,  he  cannot  repress  a  smile 
at  what  appears  to  be  the  capriciousness  and 
obstinacy  of  his  thoughts.  They  select  their 
own  subject,  apparently  in  the  most  hap 
hazard  fashion,  without  obtaining  his  consent, 
and  dwell  upon  that  subject  as  long  as  they 
like.  When  they  wander  off  toward  any 
subject,  whether  it  is  an  old  language  or  a 
new  woman,  they  become  so  engrossed  in  it 
that  they  do  not  pay  as  much  attention  as 
one  might  think  they  should  pay  to  the  other 
well-dressed  and  good-looking  thoughts  which 
14  209 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

they  find  walking  around  the  subject  and 
bowing  to  each  other. 

Sometimes  they  jostle  these  other  thoughts 
and  tread  on  their  toes.  They  do  not  mean 
to  be  rude.  They  merely  want  to  view  the 
subject,  and,  as  they  seem  to  have  no  fear  of 
being  trodden  upon  themselves,  they  do  not 
try  to  keep  off  the  toes  of  other  thoughts. 

The  Lonely  Man  has  tried  to  dress  his 
thoughts  in  clothes  of  the  most  fashionable 
cut,  and  part  their  hair  in  the  middle,  and 
otherwise  make  them  look  like  nice,  conven 
tional  thoughts.  Then,  when  they  have 
been  properly  groomed  and  correctly  dressed, 
he  has  sent  them  forth  to  any  subject  you 
please  to  mention,  looking  just  like  any  other 
respectable,  well-bred  thoughts ;  and  they 
have  come  back  without  a  rag  on  their  per 
sons,  revealing  their  paternity  in  every  limb 
and  gesture. 

This  seems  all  wrong.  It  would  save  so 
much  trouble  if  one's  thoughts  would  observe 
the  conventionalities  and  make  themselves 
210 


THE   RELEASE   FROM   PAIN 

look  exactly  like  the  thoughts  of  every  one 
else  in  the  crowd,  and  never  disarrange  their 
toilets  by  tussling  with  anything  like  a  truth. 
One  would  get  the  reputation  of  being  a  very 
nice  man  indeed  if  one's  thoughts  would  only 
do  that. 

One  has  but  to  train  one's  thoughts  prop 
erly,  dress  them  properly,  and  tell  them  to  be 
good  thoughts  and  take  off  their  hats  to  all 
other  thoughts,  and  close  their  eyes  when 
they  are  in  danger  of  seeing  anything  that 
might  alter  their  appearance.  Then  they 
will  come  home  looking  just  as  they  looked 
when  they  sallied  forth.  Only  they  will  not 
if  one  does  any  thinking ;  and  all  those  who 
have  tried  the  experiment  know  it. 

The  only  way  to  make  people  think  alike 
is  to  make  them  think  the  truth.  When  we 
send  our  thoughts  off  to  the  multiplication 
table  and  things  of  that  class,  they  have  no 
difficulty  in  maintaining  their  resemblance  to 
the  thoughts  of  other  people  ;  but,  as  few  of 
the  subjects  which  engage  our  attention  belong 
211 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY   MAN 

to  this  class,  our  thoughts  will  certainly  have 
their  toilets  disarranged  if  they  stray  very  far. 
Their  straying,  however,  may  enlarge  the 
boundaries  of  knowledge  and  of  unanimous 
thinking. 

The  Lonely  Man's  thoughts  were  now 
straying  in  the  direction  of  the  pain  and 
other  forms  of  evil  in  the  world.  Of  course, 
he  was  not  certain  that  he  knew  how  evil 
got  into  the  world,  but  he  was  pretty  cer 
tain  that  it  would  be  a  good  thing  to  aban 
don  some  of  the  current  theories  on  that 
subject. 

The  theories  of  which  he  was  thinking 
start  out  with  foundations  of  cobwebs,  which 
support  formidable-looking  castles  of  air  crys 
tallized  into  words,  and  they  reach  the  con 
clusion  that  "  the  principle  of  the  universe  is 
radically  perverse  and  cannot  be  amended." 
The  architects  of  these  gloomy  castles  inva 
riably  keep  on  living,  which  is  the  strongest 
argument  they  employ,  but  it  spoils  their 
castles. 

212 


THE   RELEASE   FROM    PAIN 

It  is  possible  to  build  anything  of  air 
(thought  the  Lonely  Man)  if  one  use  enough 
of  it  and  expend  industry  enough  in  convert 
ing  it  into  words  ;  and  it  is  a  singular  fact 
that  the  most  terrifying  and  depressing  things 
in  the  world  are  constructed  of  air  and  cob 
webs,  or  still  more  highly  rarefied  substances. 

Even  the  old-fashioned  Devil  —  the  one 
on  whom  Luther  wasted  his  ink  —  was  so 
airy  that  the  ink  bottle  went  clear  through 
him  and  broke  on  the  wall  and  left  a  spot 
which  the  credulous  tourist  may  see  yet. 

A  personal  Devil  was  a  sufficient  explana 
tion  of  evil  only  for  simple  minds.  It  would 
not  do  for  the  philosophers  of  the  early  part 
of  the  last  century ;  so  they  built  pretty  little 
castles  of  gloom  of  their  own  in  Germany, 
Italy,  and  other  places. 

The  explanations  of  science  were  equally 
inadequate  for  these  philosophers ;  so  they 
tried  to  construct  their  castles  of  something 
more  real  than  the  realities  of  science  —  and 
built  them  of  air  and  cobwebs. 
213 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

There  was  Schopenhauer,  who  built  a 
wonderful  castle  of  gloom  at  Dresden  and 
called  it  Pessimism.  It  is  built  very  largely 
of  air,  but  it  deserves  to  endure  on  account  of 
its  bold  workmanship  and  some  of  the  beau 
tiful  truths  that  are  imbedded  in  its  walls. 
They  are  more  substantial  than  air,  and  must 
have  been  dragged  in  unwittingly,  for  they 
have  not  the  color  of  pessimism.  Some  of 
the  frowning  parapets  might  have  been  made 
equally  gloomy  if  they  had  been  constructed 
of  the  realities  of  science,  but  the  dismal 
black  of  the  main  walls  is  seen  to  be  a  mere 
pigment  of  words,  which  can  be  scraped  off. 
We  are  the  less  inclined  to  forgive  the  use  of 
so  black  a  paint  when  we  find  that  the  archi 
tect  himself,  after  advocating  utter  poverty 
as  a  means  of  alleviating  the  miseries  of  life, 
and  death  as  a  means  of  ending  them,  angrily 
accuses  his  innocent  sister  when  he  loses  a 
part  of  his  own  fortune  (which  he  afterwards 
recovers  to  the  last  pfennig,  with  interest), 
and  flees  to  Frankfort  to  escape  the  cholera. 
214 


THE    RELEASE    FROM    PAIN 

Then,  there  was  poor  Leopard!  in  Italy  — 
deformed,  half  blind,  wholly  deaf,  sleepless, 
racked  with  pain,  with  no  companions,  little 
money,  and  a  bright  mind.  How  he  loved  his 
castles  of  gloom,  and  how  he  loved  to  build 
them !  Every  insubstantial  brick  in  their 
walls  seems  to  have  been  laid  with  a  caress. 
They  are  built  with  the  skill  of  a  consummate 
literary  artist,  but  they  are  built  wholly  of 
crystallized  air.  The  architect  thought  he  was 
portraying  the  miseries  of  the  world,  when  he 
was  but  craving  a  little  sympathy  for  his  own. 
We  find  him  luxuriating  in  the  abysmal  mel 
ancholy  of  his  awful  castles,  holding  out  to 
us  pessimism  in  all  its  naked  terrors,  "  dally 
ing  lovingly  with  the  idea  of  death"  —  and 
dreading  the  cholera.  The  quick  death  of 
cholera  seems  to  have  been  too  easy  for 
any  of  the  thorough-going  pessimists.  They 
were  too  eager  to  enjoy  the  miseries  of  life 
to  die  of  cholera. 

Then,  there  was  my  Russian  friend  who 
lived  in  a  German  pension.  He  spoke  five 
215 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY   MAN 

languages  (I  never  knew  a  Russian  who  spoke 
fewer  than  five  languages),  and  he  spoke 
pessimism  in  them  all.  When  he  spoke,  the 
other  guests  of  the  pension  were  silent.  The 
other  guests  were  usually  silent. 

No  Fruhstuck  could  he  eat  without  scold 
ing  the  Stubenmadchen  about  his  Stiefel  or 
something  else.  No  Abendlrod  could  he  eat 
without  depicting  —  in  five  languages  —  the 
vanities  and  miseries  of  life.  These  were 
the  only  two  meals  he  ever  ate,  for  he  never 
got  up  till  noon. 

He  was  thoroughly  convinced  that  alles 
Leben  ist  Leiden.  But  did  he  drink  carbolic 
acid  and  die  ?  Ah,  no;  not  he.  He  had  no 
fear,  as  Hamlet  had,  of  that  "something  after 
death  "  which 

"  Puzzles  the  will 

And  makes  us  rather  bear  those  ills  we  have 
Than  fly  to  others  that  we  know  not  of." 

For  him,  there    was   no    possibility    of  pain 

beyond  the  grave  ;  but  when  one  lives  in  a 

216 


THE   RELEASE    FROM    PAIN 

castle  of  pessimism,  one  does  not  die.  One 
has  an  artistic  temperament,  —  whatever  that 
may  be,  —  and  one  lives  to  enjoy  the  archi 
tectural  beauty  of  one's  imponderable  castle. 
One  has  a  nice  little  income,  and  nothing  to 
do  —  and  one  does  it.  One  feeds  one's  self 
well.  There  is  such  keen  delight  in  the 
misery  of  eating  !  When  one  is  full  of  food 
and  beer,  and  the  smile  of  contented  misery 
breaks  over  one's  plump  countenance,  one 
retires  a  short  distance  from  the  table  and 
snuggles  into  the  dismal  coziness  of  the  sofa. 
Then  one  smokes  a  cigarette  while  one  dis 
courses  on  the  sweet  bitterness  of  existence, 
and  shows  that  life  is  a  burden  of  pain,  and 
the  world  a  vale  of  tears.  Then  one  goes  to 
the  opera,  and  pays  the  equivalent  of  two 
dollars  for  the  privilege  of  weeping  at  the 
imaginary  death  of  an  unreal  hero.  The  real 
world  is  so  cruel  that  it  will  not  even  give 
one  all  the  misery  one  requires  ;  so  one  weeps 
at  a  tragedy  on  a  stage,  and  reads  Byron  and 
Von  Hartmann  and  the  rest. 
217 


REFLECTIONS    OF   A    LONELY   MAN 

Away  back  in  the  winding  labyrinths  of 
one's  soul  one  cherishes  Something  for  which 
one  lives.  It  is  so  defined  that  it  shall  escape 
the  definition  of  happiness.  It  is  not  happi 
ness  ;  it  is  something  better  than  happiness. 
One  never  reveals  this  Something,  but  one 
keeps  it  and  hugs  it  in  one's  soul,  while  one 
points  out  to  others  the  wretchedness  of  life 
and  the  futility  of  all  endeavor.  Why  may 
one  not  destroy  all  the  pleasure  and  happiness 
in  the  world  ?  One  still  has  the  Something. 
One  does  not  destroy  that;  and  one  lives  to 
enjoy  it.  No  one  else  knows  one  has  it; 
therein  consists  its  principal  charm.  So  one 
paints  one's  castle  of  gloom  as  black  as  one 
likes,  and  makes  its  corridors  as  dark,  and  its 
chimneys  as  cavernous,  and  its  cellars  as  nearly 
bottomless,  as  it  is  possible  to  make  them.  It 
frightens  the  beholders  deliciously,  and  air  is 
cheap;  but  one  hugs  the  Something  all  the 
while,  and  is  hap  —  no,  not  happy,  for  there  is 
no  adjective  in  any  language  corresponding  to 
this  Something.  If  one  has  comfort,  one  is 
218 


THE    RELEASE    FROM    PAIN 

comfortable;  if  one  has  happiness,  one  is 
happy.  But  if  one  has  Something,  what 
is  one  ?  There  is  no  adjective  in  any  lan 
guage  to  tell  what  one  is ;  and  thus  the  secret 
is  the  more  easily  kept. 

We  all  have  this  Something,  some  of  us 
without  knowing  it.  It  is  more  precious  to 
us  than  happiness,  and  there  is  apparently 
nothing  that  can  destroy  it.  In  its  inde 
structibility  one  seems  to  acquire  a  sort  of 
perpetuity  one's  self;  and  thus,  in  an  incom 
prehensible  sense,  it  seems  that  one  will  live 
to  possess  this  Something  after  one  has,  in 
every  comprehensible  sense,  ceased  to  exist  at 
all.  It  sometimes  makes  one  willing  to  live 
a  life  of  actual  pain,  and  work  without  any 
hope  of  reward  in  this  world  or  any  other, 
and  then  undergo  what  one  believes  to  be 
annihilation.  It  is  this  that  impels  an  un 
believer  in  immortality  to  die  in  what  he 
believes  to  be  a  worthy  cause.  In  doing  this 
one  does  not  get  happiness ;  one  gets  Some 
thing,  and  seems  to  acquire  an  eternal  claim 
219 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

upon  it.  It  is  this  that  one  gets  in  the 
recollection  of  past  pains  and  dangers  ;  it  is 
this  that  one  gets  in  all  the  griefs  and  miseries 
with  which  one  delights  one's  self. 

When  one  tries  to  bring  forth  to  the  light 
of  day  this  Something  it  eludes  one.  One 
cannot  grasp  it  firmly,  just  as  one  cannot 
firmly  grasp  the  ultimate  parts  into  which  a 
quantity  of  matter  or  a  portion  of  space  is 
divisible.  If  there  are  ultimate  atoms  which 
cannot  be  physically  divided,  they  can,  at 
least,  be  ideally  bisected  by  an  imaginary 
plane,  and  each  half  may  be  bisected,  and 
the  process  may  be  indefinitely  continued. 
The  ultimate  division  is  either  absolutely 
nothing,  or  it  is  of  infinitesimal  volume.  If 
it  is  absolutely  nothing,  an  aggregation  of  ab 
solute  nothings  constitutes  something;  which 
is  absurd  and  logically  impossible.  If  it  is,  on 
the  other  hand,  of  infinitesimal  volume  or  of 
any  volume  whatever,  and  cannot  be  even 
ideally  divided,  it  does  not  consist  of  two  halves 
or  four  quarters ;  for  to  say  that  it  does  consist 
220 


THE   RELEASE   FROM   PAIN 

of  two  halves  or  four  quarters  is  ideally  to  di 
vide  it ;  and,  however  small  it  may  be,  if  it 
does  not  consist  of  two  halves  or  four  quarters, 
it  is  utterly  incomprehensible.  To  escape  a 
logical  absurdity,  we  are  obliged  to  accept  an 
actual  incomprehensibility.  It  is  so  with 
this  Something  in  one's  mind.  It  is  incom 
prehensible,  but  it  is  there. 

This  Something  is  entirely  satisfactory  in 
its  own  realm,  but  it  does  not  fill  one's  soul. 
It  leaves  some  room  for  happiness.  Some 
people  would  rather  have  happiness  than 
Something,  anyhow.  One  must  be  a  philos 
opher  to  prefer  Something  to  happiness,  and 
we  are  not  all  philosophers.  Therefore  we 
look  around  in  the  world  for  a  comprehen 
sible  kind  of  happiness,  and  we  find  that  pain 
is,  apparently,  considerably  in  excess  of  that 
kind  of  happiness  which  we  can  clearly  de 
fine  and  bring  squarely  before  the  mind.  It 
seems  wholly  unnecessary  to  build  gloomy 
castles  of  air,  or  to  waste  our  tears  on  the 
griefs  of  imaginary  heroes.  We  can  find 
221 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY   MAN 

plenty  of  good  substantial  pain  in  the  world 
without  looking  for  artificial  grief  in  the 
product  of  any  one's  imagination. 

Then  optimism  comes  with  its  bright  hues 
and  its  cheerful  voice,  and  gives  us  a  simple 
recipe  for  either  annihilating  pain  or  embel 
lishing  it  into  a  thing  of  beauty.  Pain  is  to 
be  annihilated  by  denying  its  existence; 
when  its  existence  cannot  be  denied,  it  is  to 
be  beautified  by  the  exercise  of  hope. 

The  recipe  is  so  simple  that  the  simplest 
soul  can  use  it.  One  divides  one's  pains 
into  two  classes  —  the  less  obvious  and  the 
more  obvious.  One  denies  the  existence  of 
the  former,  and,  presto!  they  are  gone.  One 
looks  at  the  others  through  the  medium  of 
hope  and  sees  the  bright  colors  of  the  rain 
bow  playing  about  them.  Pain,  clothed  with 
the  iridescence  of  optimism,  becomes  a  thing 
of  usefulness  in  this  world  and  the  paltry 
price  of  endless  joy  in  the  next. 

Now,  such  is  the  nature  of  pain  that  to 
ignore  it  is  to  dull  its  edge;  to  forget  it  is 

222 


THE   RELEASE   FROM   PAIN 

to  destroy  it.  It  exists  only  in  conscious 
ness,  and  when  there  is  no  consciousness  of 
it,  there  can  be  no  pain.  In  addition  to  this, 
pain  is  the  most  instructive  thing  in  the 
world.  So  far  optimism  is  right. 

But  one  cannot  destroy  a  doorpost  by 
denying  its  existence,  nor  can  one  make 
scarlet  fever  less  contagious  by  denying  that 
it  is  contagious  at  all.  The  existence  of 
these  things  is  not  confined  to  consciousness, 
and  they  cannot  be  destroyed  by  being  for 
gotten.  If  a  person  ignores  these  things,  he 
does  so  at  his  peril,  for  the  doorpost  still  ex 
ists  and  is  still  hard,  and  scarlet  fever  is  still 
contagious  and  still  dangerous. 

If  there  were  no  grounds  for  hoping  that 
pain  may  ultimately  be  exterminated,  a  doc 
trine  which  teaches  us  to  ignore  and  forget 
it  would  be  invaluable,  for  such  a  doctrine 
would  make  an  otherwise  intolerable  exist 
ence  tolerable  ;  but  where  there  is  reason  to 
believe  that  most  of  the  pain  in  the  world 
could  be  avoided  and  might  be  relieved, 
223 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

such  a  doctrine  is  more  depressing  than 
pessimism. 

I  see  in  my  fancy  an  optimist.  Though  I 
see  her  only  in  fancy,  I  have  often  seen  her 
in  the  flesh,  and  once  I  knew  her  well. 
What  matters  it  if,  as  I  see  her  now,  she 
may  be  the  composite  product  of  my  recol 
lections  of  several  different  persons  ?  I  do 
not  say  that  she  is,  but  what  matters  it  ?  To 
me  she  is  one,  and  her  personality  is  always 
the  same.  I  see  her  now  as  I  have  seen  her 
a  thousand  times  before.  She  is  a  fair  young 
girl  who  has  just  crossed  the  threshold  of 
womanhood,  and  is  beautiful  with  the  deli 
cate  beauty  of  a  half-blown  rose  —  the  beauty 
that  is  untainted  with  knowledge  and  untar 
nished  by  contact  with  the  world. 

In  the  innocence  of  her  sixteen  years  she 
believes  that  this  is  the  best  of  possible 
worlds;  that  men  and  women  are  generally 
unselfish  and  just ;  that  ability  always  suc 
ceeds,  and  merit  is  always  recognized  and 
rewarded;  that  what  little  pain  there  is  in 
224 


THE   RELEASE   FROM   PAIN 

the  world  is  wisely  ordained  by  a  beneficent 
Providence,  and  that  it  will  be  amply  recom 
pensed  in  a  future  life.  Poor  girl,  as  to  the 
last  clause  of  her  belief,  I  trust  she  is  right. 
As  to  the  others,  her  faith  is  the  pathetic  faith 
of  those  in  whom  there  is  no  guile. 

To  her  the  only  real  pain  in  the  world  is 
the  pain  which  others  suffer ;  and  no  hand  is 
more  willing  to  relieve  such  pain  than  is  her 
own;  and  no  one's  cheerful  courage  does 
more  to  make  such  pain  a  pleasure  to  its 
victim. 

She  lives  on  a  farm,  where  there  are  time 
and  quiet  for  thinking,  and  large  subjects  for 
thought ;  but  to  her  gentle  soul  there  is 
something  irreverent  in  thought,  and  some 
thing  impious  in  inquiry.  So  she  does  not 
think  of  the  meaning  of  the  life  which  she 
sees  all  about  her  ;  nor  of  the  lore  of  the 
rocks,  which  reaches  back  into  the  remotest 
past ;  nor  of  the  vastness  of  infinity,  in 
whose  depths  the  stars  twinkle  at  night ;  but 
of  the  Father  who  is  among  and  above  the 
15  225 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

stars,  and  on  earth  and  everywhere ;  who 
might  have  made  it  all  otherwise,  but  who 
made  it  all  as  it  is  for  the  love  he  bore 
mankind. 

She  sees  the  beauty  of  beneficent  caprice  ; 
not  the  beauty  of  universal  order,  nor  the 
grimness  of  an  eternal  necessity,  running 
through  the  universe, —  a  necessity  to  which 
we  may  —  nay,  must  —  learn  to  adjust  our 
selves  if  we  would  be  truly  happy. 

To  her  the  Father  decrees  the  sprouting 
of  every  little  blade  of  grass,  the  coming  of 
every  storm,  and  the  course  of  every  planet 
and  star.  He  does  it  all  for  the  good  of  man. 
He  can  alter  it  all,  and  will,  at  the  entreaty 
of  one  fair  girl  who  kneels  in  her  nightdress  at 
her  window  and  pleads  in  her  gentle  voice  for 
something  to  satisfy  the  yearning  in  her  heart, 
which  she,  in  her  innocence,  thinks  is  a  yearn 
ing  for  the  Father  himself.  Perhaps  it  is. 

Old  Mother  Nature  hears  the  prayer,  and 
chuckles.  She  has  made  the  prayer  herself. 
She  has  put  the  same  prayer  —  less  eloquent, 
226 


THE   RELEASE   FROM   PAIN 

perhaps,  but  the  same  prayer —  in  the  heart 
of  every  bird  that  mates  in  the  Spring,  and 
in  the  heart  of  every  butterfly  whose  gaudy 
wings  reveal  its  presence  and  its  eagerness 
to  find  a  mate. 

There  are  waste  places  in  the  world,  un 
peopled  by  sentient  beings.  There  is  room 
in  the  water,  in  the  air,  and  on  the  land  for 
more  living  beings  and  for  higher  ones. 
Then,  men  and  women  die  in  the  course  of 
time,  and  their  places  must  be  filled,  for  the 
game  which  Nature  is  playing  with  the  race 
is  not  yet  played  out. 

So  she  puts  a  yearning  in  the  fair  optimist's 
heart,  and  the  yearning  finds  expression  in 
the  prayer,  and  presently  is  satisfied;  for 
a  man  comes  into  the  optimist's  life,  a  man 
who  is  to  her  a  paragon  of  all  the  masculine 
perfections.  And  now,  when  the  optimist 
prays,  it  is  to  thank  the  Father  for  his  infinite 
goodness  to  her. 

There  is  reason  for  her  gratitude:  her 
optimism  has  been  justified.  The  man  who 
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REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

has  come  into  her  life  is  entirely  human, 
but  he  is  not  of  the  common  herd  of  men. 
His  life  has  been  as  spotless  as  her  own 
(incredible  but  true),  and  he  loves  his  pretty 
little  optimist  with  the  singleness  of  heart 
and  the  constancy  which  such  a  girl  de 
serves.  Such  deep  sincerity  as  theirs,  such 
lofty  courage,  and  such  intense  happiness 
would  take  the  edge  from  any  testy  hermit's 
cynicism. 

So  the  years  pass  swiftly,  and  when  the 
little  optimist  has  been  married  for  two  years 
and  is  living  in  a  city  home,  she  is  still 
happy,  still  trustful,  still  deeply  in  love  with 
her  husband  and  with  life,  and  she  is  more 
optimistic  than  ever.  If  she  could  hear  the 
sacrilegious  questions  of  the  unsanctified,  she 
would  shudder  and  close  her  ears  to  them. 
She  would  not  be  able  to  see  how  any  good 
man  could  question  the  justice  and  benefi 
cence  of  the  existing  order  of  things.  It  is 
all  so  simple  to  her  :  God  is  the  author  of 
all ;  therefore,  whatever  is,  is  right,  and  what 
228 


THE   RELEASE   FROM   PAIN 

does  not  seem  to  be  right  is  a  divine  mystery 
which  it  were  presumptuous  to  investigate. 

And  pray,  why  should  she  disturb  her 
peace  with  vain  questionings  ?  Her  husband 
loves  her  as  he  loves  his  life.  He  is  a  keen 
man  of  affairs,  whom  the  world  respects  and 
admires ;  his  coffers  are  filled  with  gold ; 
the  pride  of  success  is  written  large  on  his 
handsome  face;  and  his  love  for  her  is 
evidenced  by  all  his  acts.  She  is  beautiful 
and  rich;  her  friends  are  legion  and  her 
influence  is  wide;  and  her  heart  is  so  full 
of  happiness  that  she  kneels  every  night  at 
her  bedside  to  thank  the  Father  up  among 
the  stars  for  his  goodness  to  her  and  for  the 
beautiful  world ;  and  she  asks  him  to  give 
to  others  the  same  unquestioning  faith  that 
has  brought  so  much  joy  to  her. 

Then  one  day  her  husband  comes  home 
in  the  middle  of  the  afternoon.  He  is  not 
quite  well;  he  thinks  he  has  caught  cold. 

Poor  maligned  cold  !  Is  there  any  ill  that 
affects  humanity  for  which  you  have  not  been 
229 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

blamed  ?  Did  any  dirty  cut  ever  inflame 
and  destroy  a  limb  or  a  life  but  you  were 
convicted  and  the  guilty  microbes  acquitted  ? 

Her  husband  has  a  strong  will  and  thinks 
he  does  not  need  a  doctor,  and  she,  in  her 
optimism,  believes  him ;  but  an  expression 
of  startled  incredulity  blends  with  her  re 
assuring  smile  as  her  husband's  pain  grows 
worse  and  his  groans  more  pitiful. 

She  smiles  still,  but  there  is  a  big  tear  on 
each  cheek  as  she  asks  the  doctor  when  he 
does  come  if  her  husband  will  be  sick  all 
night,  and  the  brave  little  smile  goes  out  in 
a  pathetic  little  sob.  She  has  no  doubt  or 
fear,  but  it  grieves  her  to  see  her  husband 
suffer  so.  She  hardly  knows  what  the  doctor 
is  saying  when  he  explains  that  the  illness 
is  dangerous  ;  but  he  knows,  and  he  knows 
that  if  he  had  been  called  a  day  sooner 
there  would  have  been  a  slight  possibility  of 
saving  the  patient  by  an  operation,  and  that 
there  is  no  such  possibility  now. 

So  she  prays  to  the  good  Father  up  among 
230 


THE   RELEASE   FROM   PAIN 

the  stars  to  give  back  the  dear  life  and  the 
strong  arm  and  the  loving  heart  that  He  gave 
her  before;  implores  Him  with  piteous  sobs 
to  remember  that  her  life  is  intertwined  with 
her  husband's  by  a  thousand  tender  ties  ;  be 
seeches  Him  to  take  all  else  from  her  if  He 
will  only  leave  her  husband — just  as  thou 
sands  of  others  have  prayed  who  have  prayed 
in  vain.  She  is  sleepless  in  her  eagerness  to 
help  in  the  relief  of  the  terrible  pain,  and  she 
thinks  her  heart  will  surely  break  as  she  sees 
the  deathly  pallor  deepen  and  feels  the  dying 
limbs  grow  more  like  ice,  and  knows  at  last 
that  there  is  no  hope. 

Though  the  malady  runs  its  fatal  course 
in  three  or  four  days,  these  three  or  four  days 
are  to  the  optimist  as  three  or  four  years, 
and  no  man  knows  how  long  they  are  to  the 
dying  patient,  for  his  mind  remains  clear  till 
the  shuddering  body  lies  at  last  at  the  very 
point  of  death. 

When  he  dies,  there  is  for  a  time  an  end 
of  optimism.  All  that  made  the  world  a 
231 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

pleasant  place  is  gone  out  of  it.  It  is  now 
impossible  to  see  the  beauty  of  life  or  the 
goodness  of  God.  There  is  nothing  left  in 
the  world  but  a  hopeless  loneliness,  which 
seems  to  weigh  like  a  millstone  on  one's 
heart  and  to  grow  heavier  hour  by  hour,  and 
more  unutterably  sad  as  every  familiar  object 
in  the  house  recalls  with  silent  pathos  the 
happy  incidents  of  the  past.  There  is  now 
no  apparent  irreverence  in  asking,  Why  ? 
Why  has  so  good  a  man  and  so  loving  a 
husband  been  cut  down  in  the  full  vigor  of 
youth  ?  Why  has  he  been  killed  by  slow 
torture  that  would  have  been  worse  than  that 
inflicted  by  the  crudest  savages  if  it  had  not 
been  in  some  measure  relieved  by  the  doctor's 
efforts  ?  Why  has  her  heart  been  broken 
and  every  tender,  clinging  fibre  of  her  being 
trodden  upon  as  with  a  heel  of  iron  ? 

She  will  not  ask,  but  in  the  endless  night, 
as  she  paces  the  floor  alone  with  her  grief, 
the  elfish  questions  hover  about  in  the  dark 
ness,  like  messengers   from   Hell,  and  try  to 
232 


THE    RELEASE    FROM    PAIN 

creep  deep  into  her  soul.  When  her  gray- 
face  looks  out  at  the  dawn,  the  questions  are 
still  there,  and  a  wicked  voice  which  she 
knows  is  not  her  own  seems  to  say  in  almost 
audible  tones,  "  There  is  no  God  !  There  is 
no  God  !  " 

Again  she  prays,  and  now  she  prays  with 
the  trembling  desperation  of  one  who  would 
escape  complete  despair.  It  is  not  for  hap 
piness  that  she  prays,  nor  for  life,  nor  death, 
but  for  one  little  fragment  of  the  crumbling 
raft  of  faith  that  will  keep  her  from  sinking 
in  the  black  flood  of  despair  that  is  rising 
about  her.  So  she  struggles  against  despair 
till  exhaustion  overcomes  her ;  and  the  strug 
gle  is  many  times  repeated. 

But  at  last  merciful  time  dulls  the  sharp 
edge  of  her  grief.  She  does  not  despair,  and 
her  faith  and  her  optimism  return.  She  does 
not  understand  it,  but  she  knows  it  was  for 
the  best,  and  the  Father  is  still  a  loving 
P'ather  who  does  all  things  for  our  good. 
So  she  takes  up  her  broken  life  again,  and 
233 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

fills  it  with  a  factitious  happiness,  and  spends 
much  time  in  prayer. 

A  few  years  flit  by,  and  as  she  realizes  that 
she  is  still  young,  still  beautiful,  and  still  rich, 
her  optimism  begins  again  to  paint  the  dull  old 
world  in  something  like  its  former  cheerful 
hues. 

Then  one  morning  a  letter  arrives  from 
her  agent,  informing  her  that  her  fortune 
has  been  lost.  It  has,  in  fact,  been  stolen  — 
though  not  in  violation  of  the  law.  A  skilful 
thief  does  not  violate  the  law.  Those  bur 
glars  who  crack  safes  and  forge  names  are 
dull  souls  who  cannot  appreciate  the  refine 
ments  of  modern  robbery. 

The  optimist  does  not  believe  there  has 
been  any  dishonesty,  or  that  it  would  be 
possible  for  a  thief  to  be  accounted  a  respec 
table  citizen  ;  but  she  realizes  that  in  her 
husband's  death  she  has  lost  not  only  the 
love  of  his  loyal  heart,  but  the  protection  of 
his  master  mind ;  and  grief  amid  the  lux 
urious  surroundings  of  wealth  is  one  thing, 
234 


THE   RELEASE    FROM    PAIN 

while  grief  with  the  lean  wolf  of  poverty 
sniffing  at  the  door  is  quite  another. 

But  to  her  optimistic  mind  this  seems  a 
trifling  loss.  It  was  only  when  her  heart 
was  broken  that  her  optimism  failed  her. 
Already  she  sees  the  goodness  of  God  in 
taking  away  her  fortune.  It  was  to  stimu 
late  her  to  do  something  good  and  great  in 
his  service.  She  will  become  a  nurse,  and 
by  her  faithfulness  and  devotion  to  her  work 
she  will  rise  to  the  highest  fame,  and  the 
world  will  speak  her  name  with  reverence,  as 
it  speaks  the  name  of  Florence  Nightingale. 

She  obtains  the  necessary  credentials  and 
enters  a  training  school.  She  is  sure  that  in 
this  unselfish  work  she  will  have  the  help  of 
God  and  the  high  appreciation  of  mankind, 
and  her  optimism  paints  a  roseate  picture  of 
the  future. 

But  it  is  all  different  from  what  she  thought 

it  would  be.     No   one    seems   to  appreciate 

her  loftiness  of  purpose  in  coming  here,  and 

there  is  less  opportunity  of  doing  good  than 

235 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

she  thought  there  would  be.  For  three 
months  she  does  nothing  but  make  beds  and 
do  other  work  which  an  ordinarily  intelligent 
servant  should  be  able  to  do ;  and  she  pres 
ently  learns  that  this  is  to  be  done,  not  to 
please  God  nor  to  pave  her  way  to  fame, 
but  to  escape  the  censure  of  the  head  nurse. 

Her  head  nurse  is  a  blond  girl  whose  eyes 
slant  downwards  from  the  top  of  her  nose. 
She  is  not  popular  with  the  probationers  nor 
with  the  nurses  in  general,  but  she  does  not 
seem  to  care.  She  is  in  high  favor  with  the 
superintendent  of  the  training  school. 

So  the  optimist  works  like  a  galley  slave 
in  wards  redolent  of  iodoform,  and  will  earn 
the  right  to  be  a  head  nurse,  by  and  by,  her 
self.  She  has  a  pleasant  smile  for  every  one  ; 
and  the  months  go  by,  and  she  does  not 
become  a  head  nurse. 

The  blond  girl  is  already  an  assistant  super 
intendent —  but  she  is  not  an  optimist.  It 
might  not  be  just  to  say  that  the  blond  girl 
has  obtained  her  promotion  through  anything 
236 


THE   RELEASE   FROM   PAIN 

like  toadyism  or  flattery,  for  she  is  fully  com 
petent  to  fill  her  new  position.  But  there 
are  other  equally  competent  nurses  who  have 
not  been  promoted.  And  the  blond  girl 
does  understand  the  use  of  that  seductive 
flattery  which  does  its  work  and  leaves  no 
trace ;  and  she  never  wastes  it  on  her  subor 
dinates.  It  is  almost  noticeable  that  she  re 
serves  it  for  members  of  the  directory  or  of 
the  hospital  staff,  or  for  the  superintendent. 

The  optimist  sees  no  connection  between 
all  this  and  the  blond  girl's  promotion.  Merit 
is  the  only  ground  of  promotion  here,  as  else 
where.  So  she  works  harder  than  ever  and 
is  startled  when  she  looks  in  her  mirror  and 
sees  that  her  beautiful  complexion  is  gone 
and  that  she  is  becoming  bent  and  haggard. 

It  does  not  matter,  for  fame  is  just  beyond. 
She  will  deserve  promotion,  and  then  it  will 
come  ;  and  she  already  sees  her  portrait  among 
those  of  others  of  the  world's  benefactors. 

One  morning  she  is  transferred  to  the 
operating  room.  She  has  never  witnessed  an 
237 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

operation  before,  and  to  her  there  is  a  grue 
some  novelty  about  the  steam  from  the  ster 
ilizer,  the  fumes  of  ether  and  carbolic  acid, 
the  ghastly  face  of  the  unconscious  patient, 
the  grotesque  white  costumes  of  the  surgeon 
and  his  assistants,  and  the  glass  cases  full 
of  glittering  and  cruel-looking  instruments. 
Her  pulse  quickens,  and  her  heart  beats  with 
audible  violence  within  her  emaciated  breast. 

She  has  nothing  to  do  but  to  hold  a  basin 
of  sponges  where  the  second  assistant  can 
reach  them  with  his  blood-stained  left  hand. 

But  the  optimist  cannot  help  looking  at 
the  face  and  listening  to  the  spluttering 
breathing,  although  it  is  not  necessary  for 
her  to  do  this.  Of  course  she  knows  the 
operation  will  save  the  patient's  life,  and  the 
patient  does  not  feel  it,  and  it  is  a  noble 
work ;  and  she  has  nothing  to  do  but  to 
hold  the  basin  for  the  blood-stained  hand  — 
nothing  to  do  but  that. 

The  surgeon  is  looking  at  her  with  a  cyni 
cal  smile.  He  says  nothing,  and  presently 

238 


THE   RELEASE    FROM    PAIN 

proceeds  with  the  operation,  while  the  smile 
hovers  around  the  corners  of  his  mouth.  It 
is  so  very  funny  that  the  new  nurse  should 
look  so  ghastly  pale. 

The  optimist  bites  her  under  lip  to  keep 
from  fainting,  but  her  hand  trembles  so  vio 
lently  that  the  edge  of  the  basin  strikes  the 
second  assistant's  hand  when  it  comes  out  for 
another  sponge,  and  he  turns  his  head  slightly 
to  look  at  her,  and  then  he  smiles.  It  is  very 
funny  indeed. 

If  she  could  only  keep  the  room  from 
swaying,  she  could  stand  firmly,  but  it  rocks 
so  violently,  and  the  steam  is  so  suffocating, 
and  the  blood  on  the  hand  is  so  red  —  so  red 
—  so  very  red — that  she  faints,  and  the 
second  assistant  catches  her  just  in  time  to 
prevent  her  from  knocking  her  head  against 
the  tiled  floor.  Then  she  is  carried  out  \  the 
second  assistant  disinfects  his  hands,  and  the 
operation  goes  silently  on. 

When  she  revives,  the  superintendent  is 
sitting  beside  her  with  the  look  of  ineffable 
239 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

superiority  which  only  this  superintendent 
knows  how  to  wear.  One  of  the  superin 
tendent's  eyebrows  is,  by  nature,  a  little 
higher  than  the  other.  When  she  wishes  to 
feel  and  seem  especially  superior,  it  goes  a 
little  higher  still.  Just  now  it  is  at  its  highest 
point. 

The  superintendent  was  born  with  a  heart, 
but  rinding  a  heart  both  useless  and  dangerous 
in  the  struggle  for  advancement,  she  has 
allowed  it  to  atrophy,  and  now,  instead  of  a 
heart,  she  has  a  pair  of  all-seeing  eyes,  with 
a  perennially  elevated  brow  over  the  left  one. 
The  superintendent  has  noticed  of  late  that 
the  optimist  is  hardly  fitted  for  her  work. 
The  superintendent  has  had  unfavorable  re 
ports  from  the  optimist  through  the  blond 
girl  with  the  slanting  eyes.  The  superin 
tendent  thinks,  in  short,  that  it  will  be  best 
for  the  institution,  as  well  as  for  the  optimist 
—  especially  for  the  optimist  —  to  cancel  the 
contract,  release  the  optimist  from  any  further 
obligations,  and  permit  her  to  return  to  her 
240 


THE   RELEASE   FROM   PAIN 

home,  although  she  knows  the  girl  no  longer 
has  a  home. 

The  superintendent  is  not  an  optimist  her 
self.  She  knows  that  envious  eyes  are  looking 
in  vain  for  some  flaw  in  her  work,  and  that  if 
she  would  hold  her  own  position,  she  must  be 
eternally  vigilant  and  absolutely  inexorable. 

So,  no  more  of  fame  for  the  present.  The 
only  heart  that  ever  loved  the  little  optimist 
as  every  woman  wishes  to  be  loved,  has  long 
since  ceased  to  beat;  her  fortune  is  gone, 
and  her  health  is  ruined,  but  her  optimism 
still  weaves  a  halo  of  paling  iridescence  about 
her  future.  If  she  were  a  little  stronger  she 
would  try  again  and  succeed.  She  will  stay 
in  the  city  and  support  herself  till  she  is  able 
to  give  nursing  another  trial.  She  is  not 
endowed  with  those  attributes  which  seem  to 
be  necessary  in  a  nurse,  but  she  has  other 
attributes  which  make  it  possible  for  her  to 
be  useful.  Those  persons  who  are  most 
highly  endowed  must  stand  higher  than 
others ;  it  is  just  that  they  should.  But  all 
*6  241 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

are  endowed  in  some  degree,  and,  in  justice, 
should  have  some  place  in  the  social  organism. 
All  cannot  be  great  painters,  nor  great  in 
ventors,  nor  great  nurses.  All  cannot  help 
the  race  in  an  equal  degree,  and  therefore 
cannot  enjoy  an  equal  measure  of  gratitude 
and  fame ;  but  all  may  help  the  race  in  some 
degree,  and  may  have,  in  some  measure,  the 
rewards  of  usefulness.  If  all  cannot  find  the 
same  level,  surely  each  may  find  his  own 
level  without  pushing  his  fellows  down. 

She  is  not  seeking  fame  now.  She  only 
wants  a  living  and  the  comforting  assurance 
that  she  is  earning  it.  There  can  be  no 
difficulty  in  finding  useful  employment  of 
some  kind.  The  times  are  prosperous.  The 
great  city  is  full  of  activity.  Surely  she  can 
take  some  part  in  it.  Furthermore,  she  is 
living  in  the  most  highly  civilized  country  in 
the  world,  among  beings  who  have  been 
taught  for  nineteen  centuries  to  love  their 
neighbors  as  themselves.  If  each  one  loves 
her  as  he  loves  himself,  she  can  find  a  thou- 
242 


THE    RELEASE    FROM    PAIN 

sand  openings  in  an  hour.  So  she  breathes 
out  a  tremulous  little  prayer  to  the  Father, 
and  in  the  morning  she  takes  a  cheap  lodg 
ing  and  begins  to  look  for  employment. 

She  learns  from  a  daily  paper  that  fifty 
saleswomen  are  wanted  in  a  large  department 
store.  She  immediately  applies  for  a  position, 
but  she  finds  many  ahead  of  her.  She  must 
stand  in  a  line  and  wait  for  her  turn.  As 
she  moves  slowly  along  with  the  line,  she  has 
time  to  notice  that  many  of  the  applicants 
are  extremely  pretty,  and  suddenly  she  re 
members  that  she  has  seldom  seen  a  plain- 
looking  saleswoman  in  this  store.  With  a 
pang  she  realizes  that  her  own  beauty  is  gone, 
but  that  can  surely  not  impair  her  chances 
of  being  employed.  Her  mind  is  alert,  her 
character  is  unimpeachable,  and  she  could  do 
her  work  as  well  as  any  of  those  girls  who 
are  confidently  smiling  as  they  sign  their 
applications  at  the  manager's  desk.  She  will 
not  be  rejected  on  account  of  her  looks. 
That  brusque  man  at  the  desk  cannot  be  so 
243 


REFLECTIONS    OF   A    LONELY    MAN 

sentimental  as  to  prefer  saleswomen  simply 
because  they  are  pretty. 

No,  my  dear  optimist,  he  is  not  sentimen 
tal,  but  he  knows  that  personal  attractions 
in  a  saleswoman  have  a  distinct  commercial 
value.  He  takes  advantage  of  existing  con 
ditions.  In  days  agone,  the  prettiness  of 
these  girls  would  have  been  hidden  under 
the  bushel  of  domesticity.  It  would  have 
been  wasted  in  attracting  a  husband  and 
brightening  a  home  and  assisting  its  posses 
sor  to  find  her  way  to  hearts  that  would  have 
continued  to  love  her  after  the  decay  of  her 
prettiness.  Since  then  the  world  has  pro 
gressed.  The  world  is  emancipated.  The 
prettiness  of  these  girls  will  help  their  em 
ployer  to  put  dollars  in  his  tills.  Customers 
will  buy  more  goods  from  a  pretty  girl  than 
they  would  from  a  plain  girl  who  might  be 
an  equally  competent  saleswoman. 

Of  course,  the  pretty  girl  does  not  get  the 
money.  Her  employer  gets  that.  But  is  it 
not  just  that  he  should  ?  He  has  hired  that 
244 


THE   RELEASE   FROM   P.AIN 

girl's  prettiness  and  put  it  on  exhibition  be 
hind  his  counter  for  commercial  purposes, 
just  as  he  exposes  his  wares.  Prettiness  in 
the  old  days  could  help  a  girl  to  get  a  living 
only  by  exposing  her  to  the  inconvenience  of 
being  loved  and  more  or  less  monopolized  by 
one  man.  Now  she  can  sell  her  prettiness 
on  the  market  to  a  corporation  that  does  not 
want  her  heart,  and  will  have  no  further  use 
for  her  prettiness  after  all  the  money  has  been 
squeezed  out  of  it. 

You  will  find  some  plain  girls  in  the  em 
ploy  of  this  house,  but  they  either  have  spe 
cially  valuable  endowments  of  some  other 
kind,  or  were  employed  when  the  supply  of 
prettiness  was  not  equal  to  the  demand. 

The  optimist  now  stands  before  the  man 
ager,  whose  look  of  bored  indifference  grad 
ually  breaks  into  a  cynical  smile,  the  same 
smile  that  she  saw  on  the  faces  of  the  sur 
geon  and  his  second  assistant,  the  smile  of  a 
man  who  is  reminded  by  the  desperate  dis 
tress  of  another  that  he  himself  is  still  glad 
245 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

to  be  alive.  He  shoves  an  application  form 
toward  her,  although  he  has,  in  his  own 
mind,  already  rejected  her,  and  he  seems  to 
enjoy  the  pitiful  eagerness  with  which  she 
signs  her  name. 

Then  she  goes  home  to  her  lodging  to 
wait  and  rest  and  nurse  her  hope.  She  hears 
nothing  of  her  application  on  the  next  day, 
and  on  the  second  day  she  returns  to  the 
store  to  learn  her  fate. 

After  much  trouble  she  gains  an  audience 
with  the  manager,  who  now  tells  her,  with 
out  any  further  formality,  that  she  will  not 
do;  and  she  staggers  into  the  street  without 
knowing  how,  and  wanders  endlessly  without 
knowing  where. 

What  would  you  have  ?  The  manager 
does  not  own  the  store.  He  himself  is 
working  for  a  salary,  and  if  he  does  not  use 
his  utmost  endeavor  to  procure  saleswomen 
who  will  be  most  profitable  to  his  employer, 
a  manager  with  less  heart  and  more  acumen 
will  be  employed  in  his  stead.  Twenty  en- 
246 


THE   RELEASE   FROM   PAIN 

vious  subordinates   are  already   scheming   to 
get  his  place. 

Days  go  by,  —  days  of  dreary  disappoint 
ment  and  cruel  rebuffs,  —  and  Christmas  is 
coming  on  apace.  Shop  windows  are  taking 
on  a  gay  appearance;  streets  in  the  shopping 
district  are  crowded  with  pedestrians  and  car 
riages  ;  a  happy  expectancy  is  in  the  air  —  a 
sort  of  anticipatory  glow  of  gladness  which 
will  break  into  its  full  radiance  only  at  Christ 
mas.  Surely  in  this  time  of  universal  glad 
ness  and  good  will,  the  little  optimist  will  not 
be  overlooked. 

She  is  not  disappointed.  In  the  middle  of 
December  she  is  employed  in  a  big  store  that 
needs  more  saleswomen  to  meet  the  demands 
of  the  holiday  trade.  In  the  general  thawing 
out  of  hearts  which  this  season  promotes, 
does  not  a  manager's  heart  thaw  out  so  that 
he  becomes  willing  to  employ  a  little  optimist 
in  spite  of  her  inexperience  and  the  loss  of 
her  good  looks  ?  She  thinks  it  does,  and 
goes  gladly  to  work. 

247 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

There  are  great  crowds  in  the  store,  and 
there  is  much  selecting  of  presents  by  per 
sons  who  have  much  to  say  about  the  silly 
custom  of  giving  presents  at  Christmas. 
The  givers  are  generally  burdened  by  the 
giving,  and  the  recipients  are  seldom  pleased 
with  the  gifts ;  but  when  one  knows  one 
will  receive  something  which  one  does  not 
want,  one  must  also  give  something  which 
will  not  be  wanted. 

The  little  optimist  shudders.  Is  this  what 
Christmas  means  to  these  people  ?  It  is  not 
what  it  has  meant  to  her. 

The  conversation  among  the  customers  goes 
on.  One  makes  a  shabby  joke  about  letting 
the  laundress  wait  till  Christmas  presents  have 
been  paid  for.  Another  makes  the  same  joke 
about  the  landlady. 

Then  this  season  of  intensified  Christian 
ity  is  the  season  of  neglected  obligations  !  It  is 
the  season  when  the  butcher,  the  baker, and  the 
candlestick-maker  may  snap  their  fingers  for 
their  money  till  we  get  ready  to  pay  them  ! 
248 


THE   RELEASE   FROM   PAIN 

Well,  yes ;  but  at  this  season  of  joy  and 
gladness,  when  one  loves  one's  fellow-man, 
if  ever,  must  not  one  buy  presents  to  show 
it,  and  to  show  that  one  is  not  a  mere  selfish 
heathen  ?  Are  not  dead  walls  and  magazine 
covers  illuminated  with  advertisements  gayly 
suggestive  of  the  coming  cheer,  and  sweetly 
reminiscent  of  Him  who  preached  peace  on 
earth  and  good  will  to  men  ?  Are  not  the 
shop  windows  decorated,  and  the  streets  and 
sidewalks  crowded,  and  the  clerks  busy,  and 
the  sleigh-bells  jingling,  because  some  nine 
teen  centuries  ago  Christ  was  born  ? 

My  dear  optimist,  there  may  be  some  (I 
am  sure  there  are)  to  whom  this  season 
means  a  warming  of  the  heart  toward  one's 
fellow-beings ;  to  whom  it  brings  a  thousand 
tender  memories  sweeter  than  those  awakened 
by  any  other  season  of  the  year — persons 
who  find  a  joy  in  giving  and  a  pleasure  in 
receiving  not  to  be  measured  in  money.  But 
the  bustling  activity  in  which  you  are  now 
taking  part  is  not  the  result  of  a  doctrine  of 
249 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

peace  on  earth  and  good  will  toward  men  ;  it 
is  not  a  joyful  celebration  of  the  birth  of 
Him  who  preached  that  doctrine ;  it  is  the 
result  of  the  skilful  execution  of  an  elaborate 
trick  of  commerce,  whereby  utterly  useless 
goods  can  be  sold  at  enormous  profits  and 
old  goods  brought  forth  from  their  hiding 
places  and  sold  at  advanced  prices.  You 
cannot  see  this  ?  No  optimist  can.  But  it 
is  true. 

The  little  optimist  is  very  tired  in  the 
evening,  but  she  is  happy.  She  is  at  last 
taking  part  in  the  world's  activity.  She  has 
at  last  found  her  level,  and  can,  in  her 
humble  way,  be  useful  in  the  world.  She 
is  even  growing  stronger  in  spite  of  her  hard 
work.  At  her  counter  she  has  made  some 
friends  who  have  been  acute  enough  to  see 
in  her  face  the  beauty  which  mere  emaciation 
does  not  destroy,  acute  enough  to  read  in 
that  pale  face  a  history  of  pathetic  suffering 
made  more  pathetic  still  by  the  uncomplain 
ing  resignation  with  which  it  has  been  borne. 
250 


THE    RELEASE    FROM   PAIN 

There  has  been  little  time  for  confidences  at 
her  counter,  but  one  lady  has  learned  enough 
to  become  interested  and  to  want  to  help  the 
optimist  in  the  execution  of  her  plans.  The 
lady  is  connected  with  the  management  of  a 
training  school  and  has  asked  the  little  opti 
mist  to  call  on  her. 

So  the  world  grows  suddenly  bright  again, 
and  she  becomes  exceedingly  happy.  You 
see,  all  things  come  to  him  who  knows  how 
to  wait.  Is  it  not  a  dear  old  world  after  all  ? 
There  are  kind  hearts  in  it,  and  (there  is  no 
doubt  about  it)  her  prettiness  is  returning. 
There  is  an  encouraging  little  suggestion  of 
pink  in  her  cheeks,  especially  in  the  after 
noon.  There  is  a  brightness  in  the  eyes  that 
is  really  striking.  It  is  true  there  is  a  cough, 
but  it  is  growing  better.  Such  coughs  are 
always  growing  better. 

She  stands  before  her  mirror  and  arranges 
her  hair  in  the  prettiest  manner  she  can  in 
vent.  Yes,  her  prettiness  is  really  returning, 
and  the  knowledge  gives  her  pleasure  so 

251 


REFLECTIONS    OF   A    LONELY    MAN 

intense  that  she  fears  it  springs  from  sinful 
vanity;  but  it  is  really  due  to  an  instinct  that 
teaches  any  woman  that  her  strongest  weapon 
in  the  encounter  with  the  world  is  an  attrac 
tive  exterior.  She  can  do  something:  with 

D 

brains  if  she  has  them,  but  if  she  has  pretti- 
ness,  she  can  often  get  credit  for  brains  that 
she  does  not  have;  and  in  any  case,  whether 
she  is  "  emancipated  "  or  not,  so  long  as  there 
are  men  in  the  world,  she  can  never  accom 
plish  as  much  with  brains  as  she  can  with  a 
pretty  face  or  a  handsome  figure. 

On  Christmas  Eve  five  hundred  girls  are 
discharged  —  the  optimist  among  them.  The 
holiday  trade  is  over.  The  old  goods  have 
either  been  disposed  of  or  will  have  to  wait 
till  the  next  anniversary  of  the  Master's 
birthday  improves  the  market.  She  is  not 
yet  strong  enough  to  enter  the  new  training 
school,  and  she  goes  trembling  to  her  knees 
again. 

But  why  should  I  follow  her  sad  history 
further  ?  Why  should  I  recall  the  pathetic 
252 


THE   RELEASE    FROM    PAIN 

details  to  the  end  ?  Is  it  not  the  old  story 
of  the  weak,  whom  the  world  loves  to  kick 
out  of  the  way  to  make  room  for  the  strong  ? 
Who  cares  for  the  weak  and  their  infirmities  ? 
To  the  wall  with  them,  and  then  to  the  poor- 
house  or  the  hospital.  We  will  care  for 
them  there  till  they  die,  for  we  are  Christians, 
but  who  wants  them  to  live  among  men  and 
perpetuate  their  weaknesses  ?  Let  us  have  a 
strong  race,  a  race  of  noble  creatures  who  are 
able  to  withstand  a  hostile  world  or  kick  a 
cringing  dog !  Let  us,  by  all  means,  guard 
the  race  against  corruption  with  those  qualities 
that  are  of  no  present  commercial  value ! 

And  yet,  when  I  look  back  to  my  little 
optimist's  palmy  days,  I  cannot  think  the 
race  would  suffer  if  there  were  more  like  her 
in  the  world.  I  cannot  think  the  battle  goes 
against  her  because  of  her  unfitness.  When 
I  see  how  hope  revives  within  that  broken 
heart  and  glows  with  undimmed  lustre  to  the 
end  (which  is  not  long  delayed)  ;  when  I  see 
the  patient  soul  go  out  without  a  murmur  at 
253 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

the  treatment  which  it  had  received ;  when  I 
see  on  her  dead  face  the  stamp  of  something 
higher  than  what  is  called  success  could  put 
there  ;  when  I  see  the  bitter  grief  of  those 
whose  love  she  never  knew  she  had,  I  pay 
the  silent  tribute  of  a  tear  to  her  sublime 
philosophy  of  hope,  and  hope  myself  that  in 
some  way  which  labored  logic  cannot  bring 
to  light,  that  gentle  soul  will  be  rewarded. 

But  when  I  see  the  cruel  ignorance  which 
optimism  fosters  in  those  who  harbor  it,  and 
the  brutal  selfishness  it  hides  in  others,  I  am 
impelled  to  rend  the  pretty  mask  into  a  thou 
sand  fragments,  and  show  beneath  its  rain 
bow  colors  this  pair  of  vampires  that  suck 
the  blood  of  victims  while  they  sleep. 

If  instead  of  increasing  the  total  amount 
of  pain  in  the  world  by  adding  an  unreal  kind 
to  the  real  kind,  as  the  pessimists  do ;  and 
instead  of  concealing  from  our  timid  eyes 
the  existence  of  real  pain  and  injustice,  as 
the  optimists  do,  we  should  cast  about  for 
254 


THE   RELEASE   FROM    PAIN 

methods  of  reducing  the  amount  of  pain  that 
actually  exists,  we  might  find  the  work 
equally  interesting  and  profitable. 

Here  one  is  led  to  wonder  whether  it  is 
possible  to  abolish  pain ;  and  this  leads  one 
to  inquire  why  pain  is  in  the  world  at  all. 

Those  who  believe  that  the  world  is  con 
trolled  by  a  supernatural  divinity  that  is  not 
subject  to  the  same  natural  and  logical 
necessities  that  govern  other  beings,  must 
believe  that  pain  was  deliberately  and  arbi 
trarily  introduced  into  the  world  by  that 
divinity  ;  or  that  the  divinity  deliberately  and 
arbitrarily  permitted  a  malevolent  spirit  to 
introduce  pain  into  the  world ;  or  that  the 
malevolent  spirit  was  so  powerful  that  it 
introduced  pain  into  the  world  in  spite  of  the 
divinity.  There  is  no  other  possible  suppo 
sition.  Either  of  the  first  two  supposi 
tions  would  imply  that  the  divinity  is  cruel ; 
the  last,  that  it  is  not  omnipotent.  Any  of 
the  suppositions  would  be  discreditable  to  the 
divinity,  and  a  reverent  man  who  thinks 
255 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

about  the  matter  is  led  to  believe  that  any 
possible  conception  of  a  supernatural  divinity 
is  wrong;  while  an  irreverent  man  who 
thinks  about  the  matter  is  led  to  believe  that 
there  is  no  divinity  at  all. 

Those  who  do  not  think  about  the  matter, 
but  accept  the  dictum  established  by  the 
automatic  thinking  of  crowds,  will,  if  they 
are  reverent,  believe  that  pain  exists  by  the 
will  or  permission  of  the  divinity,  and  that 
it  will  continue  till  it  has  been  exterminated 
through  some  miraculous  alteration  of  ex 
ternal  Nature  or  through  some  equally  mirac 
ulous  alteration  of  the  heart  of  man.  The 
less  reverent  will  continue  to  believe  that 
man  is  the  sport  of  a  pitiless  Nature  that 
is  so  constituted  that  the  race  must  suffer  till 
it  perishes. 

I  perceive  that  I  am  thinking  again,  the 
Lonely  Man  mused.  It  is  fortunate  that  no 
one  is  obliged  to  follow  me,  for  people  will 
forgive  almost  anything  except  compelling 
them  to  think.  It  would  be  laborious  to  my- 

256 


THE    RELEASE    FROM    PAIN 

self  if  it  lasted  long,  but  I  perceive  whither 
my  thinking  is  leading  me,  and  I  also  begin 
to  perceive  something  like  method  in  the 
capriciousness  of  my  thoughts. 

Let  us  suppose  that  the  divinity,  of  which 
we  seem  to  catch  fleeting  glimpses  in  Nature, 
is  inherent  in  Nature.  Such  a  divinity  could 
not  make  the  sum  of  two  and  two  anything 
but  four.  It  could  not  make  two  hills  with 
out  an  intervening  valley.  It  could  not 
make  a  fire  cold  simply  because  some  one 
happened  to  thrust  his  fingers  into  it.  It 
could  not  suspend  the  operation  of  gravity 
because  some  one  happened  to  fall  over  the 
balusters.  It  would  be  subject  to  the  same 
eternal  immutability  of  law,  and  to  the  same 
inexorable  necessities  of  logic  that  govern 
everything  else  in  Nature.  We  could,  on 
the  one  hand,  have  no  grounds  for  accusing 
such  a  divinity  of  cruelty  because  pain  exists, 
and  we  should,  on  the  other  hand,  have  no 
excuse  for  passively  awaiting  an  equitable 
adjustment  of  things  in  some  future  world. 
17  257 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

We  should  get  into  the  habit  of  believing  that 
if  our  existence  is  to  be  continued  at  all,  it 
will  be  continued  in  some  natural  way,  which 
will  still  leave  us  at  the  mercy  of  unfriendly 
conditions  till  we  learn  to  adjust  ourselves 
to  them.  We  should,  therefore,  endeavor 
to  cure  what  it  is  sometimes  so  difficult  to 
endure. 

When  we  look  about  further  to  ascertain 
the  cause  of  pain,  we  find  that  all  the  pain 
we  suffer  is  the  result  either  of  our  own  igno 
rance  and  selfishness  or  of  the  ignorance  and 
selfishness  of  other  people.  One  puts  one's 
hand  into  a  fire  because  one  is  ignorant  of 
the  unpleasant  effect  of  fire  on  a  hand.  One 
learns  what  the  effect  is,  and  adjusts  one's 
self  to  fire  afterwards  so  as  to  avoid  its  unpleas 
ant  effects.  One  treads  on  a  banana  peel  and 
falls  to  the  sidewalk,  either  because  one  does 
not  know  the  banana  peel  is  there,  or  because 
one  is  ignorant  of  a  banana  peel's  peculiar 
property  of  reducing  friction.  One  learns, 
and  adjusts  one's  self  to  banana  peels  accord- 
258 


THE    RELEASE    FROM    PAIN 

ingly.  One  steps  into  a  trap,  whether  it  con 
sists  of  iron  or  an  insidious  habit,  because 
one  is  ignorant  either  of  its  presence  or  of  its 
deadly  power. 

One  commits  a  crime  because  one  does 
not  know  that  there  is  no  escape  from  the 
just  penalties  of  actual  wrong-doing.  Intel 
ligence  may  permit  one  to  believe  that  it  is 
possible  to  escape  the  vengeance  of  man  in 
this  world  and  of  God  in  the  next,  but  it  is 
the  densest  ignorance  which  leads  one  to 
believe  that  there  is  any  escape  from  the 
torment  of  remorse  and  the  loathing  self- 
contempt  that  will  without  ceasing  torture 
its  victim  as  long  as  memory  lives.  It  is 
the  densest  ignorance  which  leads  one  to 
believe  that  any  vicarious  sacrifice  can  pur 
chase  salvation  from  the  penalties  imposed 
by  the  only  judge  who  is  always  just  and 
never  merciful  —  one's  own  self.  And  the 
man  who  is  so  impassive  that  he  cannot  feel 
these  pains  (if  there  really  is  such  a  man)  is 
so  dead  already  that  an  executioner  could 
259 


REFLECTIONS   OF   A    LONELY    MAN 

take  nothing  from  him.  Thus  his  punish 
ment  began  before  his  crime  in  his  inability 
to  experience  happiness  as  well  as  pain  j  and 
this  inability  is  the  result  of  ignorance. 

If,  after  one  has  learned  these  things,  one 
deliberately  puts  one's  hand  into  a  fire  or 
treads  on  a  banana  peel,  it  is  because  one's 
own  ignorance  or  selfishness,  or  the  igno 
rance  or  selfishness  of  other  persons,  has  put 
a  fire  or  a  banana  peel  where  it  should  not 
be,  or  has  created  conditions  which  make  it 
necessary  to  ignore  its  presence. 

Thus,  all  causes  of  pain  can  be  reduced 
to  ignorance  or  selfishness;  and  when  we 
come  to  examine  the  latter  we  shall  find 
that  there  is  a  kind  of  beneficent  selfishness 
which  is  not  a  cause  of  pain,  and  that  the 
selfishness  which  is  a  cause  of  pain,  is  itself 
the  result  of  ignorance. 

Before  a  child  learns  that  through  its  own 
selfishness  it  deprives  itself  of  all  the  pleas 
ures  arising  from  the  exercise  of  the  altruistic 
instincts,  it  wants  everything,  and  wants  it 
260 


THE   RELEASE   FROM    PAIN 

wholly  for  itself.  When  it  learns  that  there 
is  a  higher  pleasure  in  the  exercise  of  sym 
pathy  and  generosity  than  there  is  in  monop 
oly,  it  becomes  less  selfish.  It  would  no 
longer  kill  its  baby  sister  to  get  the  sister's 
rattle.  When  it  grows  into  a  youth  and  has 
learned  still  more  of  the  pains  of  selfishness, 
and  of  the  pleasures  of  generosity,  the  youth 
would  not  even  kill  his  playfellows  to  gratify 
his  selfishness.  When  he  grows  into  a  man, 
he  may  forget  what  he  has  already  learned; 
but  if  he  learns  more  of  the  penalties  of 
selfishness,  he  will  avoid,  as  far  as  existing 
conditions  permit  him  to  avoid,  injuring  any 
member  of  his  family  or  of  his  circle  of  in 
timate  friends.  The  diminution  of  his  harm 
ful  selfishness  is  thus  brought  about  solely  by 
an  increase  of  knowledge.  Selfishness  itself 
is  thus  brought  under  the  causality  of  igno 
rance,  which  therefore  appears  to  be  the 
primary  and  natural  cause  of  all  pain. 

If  ignorance  is  the  natural  cause  of  pain, 
as  heat  is  the  cause  of  evaporation,  we  cannot 
261 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

expect  a  natural  divinity  to  remove  the  pain 
till  the  cause  has  been  removed;  and  the 
only  natural  method  of  curing  ignorance  is 
through  the  acquisition  of  knowledge. 

But  can  one  pretend  to  believe  that  there 
has  not  been  a  prodigious  acquisition  of 
knowledge  by  man  ?  It  is  true  that  there  is 
much  learning  in  the  world,  and  there  appears 
to  be  plenty  of  intelligence.  People  can 
solve  the  most  intricate  problems  of  mathe 
matics,  learn  any  number  of  languages,  un 
ravel  the  most  complicated  questions  of  logic, 
create  the  most  wonderful  inventions,  and 
settle  the  most  recondite  questions  of  science 
and  philosophy.  Can  these  wonderful  beings 
justly  be  said  to  be  ignorant  ? 

No,  they  are  not  ignorant  of  these  things ; 
but  a  banker  who  knows  the  current  value 
of  ten  thousand  different  kinds  of  securities, 
may  still  not  know  that  a  burglar  is  drilling  a 
hole  in  his  safe.  So  far  he  is  ignorant,  and 
it  would  not  offend  him  to  tell  him  so  if  he 
is  a  truly  wise  and  learned  man.  In  the 
262 


THE    RELEASE    FROM    PAIN 

acquisition  of  all  this  learning,  we  may  have 
overlooked  some  facts  that  might  have  en 
abled  us  to  make  a  happier  use  of  it. 

But  is  it  not  a  fact  that  the  advance  of  the 
human  race  in  knowledge  and  intelligence 
has  been  accompanied  by  an  actual  increase 
of  pain  ? 

Perhaps  it  has  been.  Some  people  say  it 
has  been;  and  yet,  childhood  is,  in  many 
cases,  the  most  unhappy  period  of  life,  solely 
on  account  of  its  terrifying  ignorance.  But 
even  if  the  popular  belief  is  admitted  to  be 
true,  this  by  no  means  implies  that  advance 
in  intelligence  has  always  been  accompanied 
by  increase  of  pain,  nor  that  man's  advance 
in  knowledge  has  caused  the  increase  of  his 
pain,  nor  that  a  further  advance  in  knowledge 
would  not  reveal  the  source  of  his  pain  and 
the  means  of  relieving  it. 

Among  the  inferior  creatures  advance  in 
intelligence  does  not  seem  to  have  been  ac 
companied  by  increase  of  pain.  On  the 
contrary,  progress  seems  to  have  been  ac- 
263 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

companied  by  a  relative  increase  of  happiness, 
for  a  monkey  certainly  looks  happier  than  an 
oyster;  and  as  we  cannot  communicate  with 
either  animal,  we  must  be  guided  by  appear 
ances  in  both  cases.  Among  such  creatures 
an  almost  wholly  selfish  struggle  is  one  of  the 
chief  means  of  advancement ;  but  while  these 
creatures  are  not  sufficiently  intelligent  to  in 
vent  any  other  means  of  advancement,  they 
are  not  sufficiently  enlightened  to  appreciate 
or  suffer  those  pains  which  hostile  competition 
causes  among  civilized  beings.  Their  igno 
rance  is  so  profound  that  these  pains  do  not 
in  any  great  measure  exist  for  them.  Being 
ignorant  of  the  pains  of  selfishness,  they  re 
main  ignorant  of  the  means  of  avoiding  them  ; 
but  such  pains  as  they  are  capable  of  appreci 
ating  they  either  learn  to  avoid  or  quickly 
succumb  to  without  much  suffering. 

Thus   intelligence   continued   to    advance, 
apparently  without    any  relative   increase   of 
pain,  till  man  was  evolved  ;  and  he  has  now- 
advanced  so  far  that  he  has  become  capable 
264 


THE   RELEASE   FROM    PAIN 

of  acutely  appreciating  the  pains  of  selfish 
ness,  without  having  advanced  far  enough 
to  fully  recognize  the  cause  of  his  pain,  and 
certainly  without  having  advanced  far  enough 
to  perceive  clearly  that  the  cause  is  removable. 
Still  less  clearly  does  he  understand  how  to 
remove  it. 

Man  has  learned  to  recognize  selfishness 
as  a  means  of  progress,  and  he  has  become  so 
accustomed  to  the  kind  of  selfishness  by 
means  of  which  he  has  progressed  that  he 
believes  progress  would  be  impossible  with 
out  it.  He  knows  that  the  increase  of  in 
telligence  wrought  by  selfish  competition 
enables  him  to  escape  all  the  pains  that 
he  now  knows  how  to  escape,  but  he  does 
not  yet  realize  that  the  selfishness  of  his 
competition  is  the  chief  proximate  cause  of 
all  the  pain  that  remains.  His  intelligence 
is  not  the  cause,  but  the  condition  of  his 
pain. 

Now,  the  question  arises  :  Will  man  ever 
acquire  that  intelligence  which  will  enable 
265 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

him  to  escape  from  his   selfishness  and  thus 
escape  from  pain  ? 

He  has  already  acquired  it,  but  it  is  still  in 
a  nebulous  form.  He  has  the  knowledge,  as 
a  slumberer  who  is  not  fully  enough  awake  to 
cover  himself  has  the  knowledge,  that  the  bed 
clothes  have  slipped  off.  Man  hopes,  in  an 
indistinct  way,  that  the  race  will  in  some 
future  age  be  released  from  its  pain,  but  he 
does  not  know  how  the  release  will  be  accom 
plished,  nor  why  he  hopes.  He  hopes,  as  a 
dreamer  hopes,  that  he  will  grow  warm,  with 
out  realizing  that  he  must  awake  and  relieve 
his  own  discomfort  if  it  is  ever  to  be  relieved 
at  all.  He  has  dreamed  his  dream  of  pain  so 
long  that  he  thinks  he  must  always  dream ; 
and  when  his  slumber  is  so  far  disturbed  that 
he  partially  wakes,  and,  through  the  phan 
tasms  of  his  dream,  faintly  sees  the  fleeting 
vision  of  the  truth  that  would  release  him,  he 
mutters  uneasily  in  his  slumber  and  grumbles 
that  his  painful  sleep  has  been  disturbed. 
The  vision  fades  away,  or,  if  it  stays,  its  out- 
266 


THE   RELEASE   FROM    PAIN 

line  quickly  blends  with  the  distorted  prod 
ucts  of  his  dreaming  fancy,  and  so,  while 
the  dream  is  altered,  it  still  goes  on. 

We  all  comprise  this  slumbering  intelli 
gence.  Each  one  of  us  carries  about  with 
him  a  little  fragment  of  undissolved  mind 
with  which  he  does  such  thinking  as  he  does 
at  all.  The  rest  of  our  mentality  is  merged 
in  the  common  mind  that  dreams,  and  when 
we  lose  our  grip  on  the  piece  of  mind  that  we 
try  to  keep,  our  mentality  is  wholly  merged 
in  the  common  mind,  and  we  become  auto 
matons.  No  one  can  boast  that  his  thinking 
is  in  any  great  degree  his  own,  that  it  is  not 
largely  the  suggested  thinking  of  a  dreaming 
race.  But  one  may,  for  a  brief  moment,  so 
far  awake  as  to  see  that  in  this  dreaming  mind 
there  is  a  vast  ocean  of  intelligence  that  might 
dream  a  more  reasonable  dream  if  its  individ 
ual  drops  could  occasionally  segregate  them 
selves  and  think  their  own  unbiased  thoughts. 

They  cannot  do  this  now,  but  they  would 
learn  to  do  it  if  every  man  would  take  an 

267 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

hour  now  and  then  to  try  to  think  the  jagged 
truth  about  anything  his  piece  of  mind  can 
think  about  at  ail ;  and  if  destiny  may  be  sup 
posed  to  concern  itself  with  so  small  a  matter 
as  a  lonely  man's  reflections,  this  is  the  goal 
to  which  destiny  has  guided  these  reflections. 
Our  thinking  might  at  first  be  mostly 
wrong,  as  mine  has  doubtless  been,  but  that 
this  method  would  at  last  lead  to  true  think 
ing,  there  is  no  doubt.  Thus  we  might  learn 
the  meaning  of  the  Golden  Rule,  which  we 
shall  hardly  learn  in  any  other  way ;  and  till 
we  learn  to  think  so  clearly  about  all  things 
that  we  can  see  the  word  Confucius  and  the 
Galilean  have  spelled  in  their  two  versions 
of  the  Golden  Rule,  and  strip  that  word  of 
all  the  grotesque  meanings  that  the  dreaming 
fancy  of  a  slumbering  race  has  woven  into 
it,  we  shall  not  escape  from  pain,  and  the 
heart  of  man  will  not  be  satisfied.  It  is  not  a 
heart  man  needs ;  he  has  that  now.  He  needs 
a  wakened  mind  to  teach  him  how  to  use  it. 


268 


THE   RELEASE   FROM   PAIN 

The  rushing  wind  drives  the  sleet  against 
the  window  and  reminds  the  Lonely  Man  of 
his  surroundings.  The  hour  is  late,  his  pipe 
has  long  since  grown  cold,  and  the  fire,  blink 
ing  its  bright  eyes  in  the  asbestos  grate,  seems 
to  whisper  in  its  saucy  voice,  "  Who  cares 
for  you  or  your  reflections  ?  Is  not  a  pound 
of  matter  worth  a  ton  of  thought  ?  Give  the 
world  something  which  it  can  ride  in,  or  talk 
through,  or  laugh  at,  and  you  will  be  ac 
counted  great.  Material  things  are  the  things 
that  endure.  I  am  still  here.  You  can  see 
me  and  feel  me ;  but  where  are  all  your  fine 
spun  thoughts  now  ?  Can  any  man  see 
them  with  his  eyes  or  feel  them  with  his 
hands  ?  The  city  is  sleeping  in  happy  ob 
livion  of  you  and  your  thoughts.  It  will 
sleep  so  to-morrow  night  and  the  night  after. 
Aye,  it  and  the  world  will  lull  themselves  to 
sleep  every  night  for  many  centuries  with  the 
sweet  conviction  that  things  are  as  they  should 
be  and  that  wise  men  will  leave  them  so. 

"  What  matters  it  that  individual  thinking 
269 


REFLECTIONS    OF    A    LONELY    MAN 

might  bring  the  millennium  a  few  centuries 
sooner  than  it  will  otherwise  come?  Has 
not  your  friend  Confucius  said,  '  Thought 
without  learning  is  perilous  '  ?  The  Millen 
nium  will  come  of  itself —  if  it  come  at  all. 
What  matters  it,  then,  that  Confucius  also 
said, '  Learning  undigested  by  thought  is  labor 
lost'?" 

But  the  Lonely  Man  perceives  that  the 
voice  of  the  fire  is  the  voice  of  a  false  wit 
ness  and  an  unwise  counsellor,  and  that  the 
blinking  eyes  of  the  fire  are  the  eyes  of  a 
vain  coquette  who  would  entice  him  into  for- 
getfulness  of  serious  matters  for  the  gratifi 
cation  of  her  own  vanity.  For  he  knows 
that  others  besides  himself  are  thinking  to 
night  —  many  others  —  hundreds  of  thou 
sands  of  them.  Perhaps  they  are  not  thinking 
as  he  has  thought.  Perhaps  they  are  think 
ing  more  wisely  and  perhaps  less  wisely. 
But  they  are  thinking  their  own  thoughts,  at 
least,  and  no  man  or  number  of  men  can 
stop  their  thinking.  It  will  go  on  till  the 
270 


THE   RELEASE   FROM   PAIN 

thousands  become  millions,  and  the  thoughts 
become  more  and  more  nearly  true ;  and 
then  things  will  become  more  nearly  as  they 
should  be. 

As  for  him,  he  has  had  his  reflections. 
For  once  he  has  been  as  wide  awake  as  it  is 
possible  for  him  to  be ;  and  now,  when  his 
brief  season  of  exile  is  over,  he  will  return 
to  his  little  crowd  and  melt  lovingly  into  it, 
and  then,  perhaps,  he  will  think  as  it  thinks. 
It  is  so  easy  to  persuade  ourselves  that  in 
thinking,  as  in  dressing,  he  was  right  who  said, 

"Though  wrong  the  mode,  comply  ;  more  sense  is 

shown 
In  wearing  others'  follies  than  our  own." 

And  yet,  if  he  should  ever  again  so  far  awake 
as  to  think  at  all,  he  will  still  believe  that  it 
is  well  to  think  one's  own  thoughts  occasion 
ally  even  though  they  be  wrong. 

THE    END 


YB 


960448 


THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


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